Really, now. Plagiarizing opening lines? What has to go through a person's head to think that wouldn't get caught? I mean, it's the freaking opening line for pete's sake.

This may just be my crappy old version of IE, but somehow the screenshots are pushing down over the Doris Lessing post immediately following (on the main page).

It isn't just the opening line. It's the whole opening page. And presumably the second page, third page, and so on. They're near-identical as far as the available excerpt goes. In one place Lanaia even forgot to change the name of the character from Alexander (in the original by David Gemmell) to Archimedes (in her version).

From the message board, quoth the author:

Lanaia: When I first started Of Atlantis, I hire a ghost writer Christopher Hill. I see what he did now and for that I aplogize. I was scammed. I apologize to Mr. Hemmel's memory and his family.

*snickers*

I'm trying to fix the screen-shot problem.

On Firefox, the screen shots are spilling into the comments header and the comments.

Maybe put a nbsp paragraph after the pictures? Something like that?

Christopher Hill writes plagiarized fantasy novels from beyond the grave?

What *will* he get up to next?

Safari too. Try: [ br clear='all' ] at the end of the post.

That will clear all the floaty bits.

Well, she did say he was a ghost writer...

Tracie--

Thank you, thank you. We'll be here all week! Try the veal...it's spectacular!

W00t, Jim! The tables did the trick for Firefox!

Publisher: Roval Publishing.

I first read this as "Ryoval Publishing", which explained everything.

still having the screenshots in the comments in firefox.

Briefly (and inadvertently) reverted to an earlier version. It should work now.

So Ms. Lee has to share "something unique", which she admits to having been ghostwritten (possibly from Beyond), via a vanity press. Is this Bizarro Book Publishing World Day or a story from The Onion? My brain hurts.

Sarah S and Tracie - can you guys come up for the Fringe? You're funnier than a lot of the 'comedians' I've seen.

I'm in Firefox (2.0.0.7) and the screenshots are now drooping into the first three comments, which are scrunching over to the sides of their boxes so as to avoid being squashed.

I have to say that while I understand the logic of properly citing your own work, it does seem odd to be accused of plagiarizing yourself. Why not quote your own master's thesis just for the glee of seeing your name in the bibliography?

Screenshots look fine now in my old/crappy IE.

The sad part is that it doesn't really come as a surprise. We all know that vanity presses deal with heaps of text, not the written word, and even if they did actually read a portion of the book, they very well might not have the literary background to recognize it.

As for the author, people do a lot of crazy things for attention. At least this one was relatively benign in the grand scheme of things.

James @ 14 - fine here now, ta muchly.

The same page has submission guidelines for the author's ezine. Of course they pay in "exposure" (with an admonition to "be optimistic") and offer $25 for the story of the month.

They also let writers "maintains complete rights to his/her work" even though they're presumably going to be published.

But silly, contradictory guidelines can be attributed to a certain gormless quality so prevalent on the internet. That plagiarism can't.

From her "yellbox", it appears Ms. Lee is unwilling to discuss the issue:

Lanaia: I have erractic hypertension, you keep dogging me I could have another stroke, contact my agent and attorney, I'm sure no one wants mt blood on their hands
Lanaia: I take total responsibility, and under the advice of my attorney, this will be fixed. My stroke, I almost died, I would never intentionally take advantage of the dead. Contact my agent and lawyer

Fascinating. Exposing her plagiarism is going to lead to blood on your hands, people! How could you do that?!

re #21

Where's Jim?

I don't *think* people bleed out from strokes...but I get all my medical info from House and CSI, so I could be wrong....

I haven't yet written my (planned) post on strokes. Yes, you can have a hemorrhagic stroke (aka "brain bleed"). On a scale from good to bad, they're way over there on the "bad" side.

As to Christopher Hill, there was a scam agent in the UK by that name, who strung people along with increasingly grand stories of their works being reviewed, then accepted, by major US publishers. This even (IIRC) went as far as contracts. Then he vanished. When the authors contacted the publishers directly, they found (wonder of wonders!) that the publishers had never heard of a) their works, or b) Mr. Hill.

But look ye at Ms. Lee's own agent, Cheryl Pillsbury. Ms. Pillsbury has not only managed to sell her clients' work to Roval Publishing, she's gotten contracts with PublishAmerica!

Regardless of whether Mr. Hill was involved, hiring a ghostwriter at all is an odd thing to do for a person who claims that "writing is my gift to share."

Um, Jim--I'm reading the #10 on the "Dear Author" list and shouldn't it be "all but a very few dogs is INcapable of" plagiarism? (Actually, the old grammar teacher in me wants it to be "all/are," too, but that doesn't matter to the sense . . .)

And neither as anything to do with your main point, of course. This is wild.

Sarah S

Not that way, normally.
And if her health is so fragile that being challenged for plagiarism is life-threatening, she might want to rethink her recreational activities. (No, I'm not very sympathetic to her. The people I know who've had strokes still manage to have better judgement that this.)

Speaking of grammar quibbles, the plagiarist "is a stroke victim that."

Tracie @ 9, Sarah S @10, 22:

Good thing I'd put the coffee cup down before reading those... (thanks; I needed laughter today.)

Sarah S @22: IIRC strokes are caused by either a blood clot in the brain (ischemic) or a blood vessel in the brain breaking (hemorraghic).

Not sure if you can bleed out from one. There's only so much space available inside the skull...

*vomits in the exact same way that George Bush vomitted on the Prime Minister of Japan.*

Myself, @24: Neither "HAS" anything to do with your main point, blast it. Fumble fingers strikes again.

The yellbox has just been blanked out.

I do so love seeing a plagiarism takedown in action.

My name is Cheryl Pillsbury, published in my own right, I'm also the founder of AG Press which did the work on the book, 'Of Atlantis.' Come to find out from a deep search into this issue, we discovered a former literary agent she worked with on this book gave her advice on how to write the prologue. Come to find out, it is simular to his book. We didn't know this, we don't know him and never did until today. We do apologise for this, we are planning to do a re-write and remedey this issue.

For people who throw stones at glasses houses should be very cautious about speaking before they know the truth. Slander can cause a major lawsuit from the author and the publisher mentioned, because I will make sure they know about this and dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca.

I was just informed, the author has already set the motions for the lawsuit, be prepared. You were told by the lawyer not to post anything related to this issue, first amendement does not apply. I have made a copy of this site for proof, see you soon. Have a ducky day.

That was quick.

He shoots, he scores!

Weeeellll. I am even more amused.

Cheryl--

Your e-lawyer threats are baseless and laughable. You grammar is atrocious and for the head of a publishing company, your clarity of thought is like dribbling sputum.

PROTIP: true statements of fact are not defamation.
BONUS PROTIP 100%: unless the statement is defamatory per se, a rapidly shrinking category, statements which do not cause actual, quantifiable damage are not actionable defamation.

Bingo!

James MacDonald, thank you for your words. It is true what Mr. Hill did to Mary, we found the proof and plan to to solve the problem. I have publishing contracts with four publishers, and nice in their way, but Roval is my favorite, because they work with the author one on one. If I could find Mr. Hill, he would sued to no end for what has caused Mary. Yes she's in a wheelchair because she suffered three strokes and had six miscarriages. It's not a ploy, its fact and a hard one for and her husband who suffered permanent injuries leaving him disabled. If anything this should be something to make us stronger, look at what they have succeeded at. Jane should apologize and pray she didn't mean the lawsuit, because Jane was told by attorney not to post anything related to this issue until we knew the truth, oh well. It shows some people will never grow up.

Wow, we were just threatened with witchcraft. I haven't been threatened with witchcraft in a good fifteen years. (Yes, I have been threatened with it before. But not by a Wiccan. They usually know better.)

I wonder if I get to be a target of the spell and the lawsuit? Do I need to say the book's opening paragraphs are identical to another book's opening paragraphs?

How do I get in on the action?

Mary? I thought her name was Lanaia.

And who's Jane?

#32

What? Really?

Was that seriously a post containing both threats of Witchy Curses AND Already Filed Lawsuits?

Second lame legal threat in three days? Is that a record for Making Light?

Are the remedeys simular?

David Gemmell was Lanaia Lee's agent? Or was Christopher Hill channeling David Gemmell? I'm not sure what Pillsbury is trying to say.

Oh, look! The cartooney! Shortly after I posted this entry I talked with Miss Teresa. I predicted, right then, that we were going to get threatened with a lawsuit. But I didn't suspect it would come from soi disant "literary agent" Cheryl Pillsbury!

Hiya, Cheryl! Too bad about that grammar.... But as long as we have you here, I'd like to ask a question about your agenting.

How much do you charge?

people who throw stones at glasses houses which also serve as porcelain shops inside of which can be found a bunch of cranky bulls... Comedy ensues.

This is the third time I've heard someone excuse themselves of plagiarism on the grounds that they'd had some unreachable third party write it for them, and that that third party was the one who committed the plagiarism.

I guess they must not have dogs.

Yes her name is Lanaia Lee and Jane is Jane Little from DearAuthor.com. I'm not a witch per say, but I defend those who are being wronged and Lanaia is being wronged major time.

he would sued to no end for what has caused Mary

This makes no sense. Sorry, but someone who claims to be a writer ought to write better than this.

The agent "writes" remarkably like the author. How about that.

Seriously, Cheryl Pillsbury, you can't write consecutive coherent sentences, let alone a legal threat that makes a lick of sense. Anything above arguing with your pets is out of your league. I'd advise you to stop before you make a larger fool of yourself. You won't, of course, but the recommendation is on record.

Mary is the pen name for Lanaia. Jane is the host of a website called Dear Author, which posted the article that James linked to. I think Cheryl has the two websites mixed up.

"Cartooney"? Is there a pun I'm missing? What's the derivation of the word?

Lanaia is being wronged major time.

This is my favorite kind of bad writing: can't deploy the most common idiom without mangling it.

More!

Cheryl (46): Major league, okay. Big time, also okay. Major time, not okay.

Wicca? @32: Cheryl, if you truly knew anything about Wicca, you would not have used the term "10 fold."

Wicca teaches that whatever we do returns to us three fold. I've been a practicing Witch since 1969.

BTW, the author you're defending has stolen an already published work. If anyone has the right to sue in this situation, it's David Gemmell and his publisher.

Beer!

Jon (50), a cartooney is a huffing-and-puffing fake threat to bring on the lawyers and lawsuits.

I'm sure "Jane" is the writer of the original list on the Dear Author page.

Cheryl,

I do rather hope that no Wiccan threats shall be made towards the family of David Gemmell.

After all it's been a rather difficult year for them with David dying and all.

You and your client should really be ashamed of causing them more distress and an apology is warranted rather than threats of lawsuits and nightmares tenfold, wouldn't you think??

Apparently Cheryl Pillsbury does not believe in the threefold rule.

this is the most amazingly special thing i have seen in quite some time.

in fact, i dare say it beats the art-plagerist who claimed her 3 year old used her computer to edit art in photoshop and repost them to a message board where they got digital money for them.

a cartooney is a huffing-and-puffing fake threat to bring on the lawyers and lawsuits.

I got that, I wanted to know where the word came from.

Man, it's tough to keep up with the traffic around here.

I'm sure that, by the time I get this post finished, "Cheryl Pillsbury" will have already moved past threats of lawsuits and onto "I posted this as a test and you all failed!"

Ok, we have the author with the pathetic life story that was "wrongly accused" of plagiarism (written by a third party, of course) who is being valiantly defended by her agent who brings "already filed lawsuits" and threats from a set of beliefs they clearly do not belong to. All we need now is another sock puppet and we'll be all set for Your Typical Attention Seeking Plagiarist That Was Caught. (note the capitalization of doom, generally abused by such authors).

(I apologize for grammar/spelling mistakes, this isn't my main language and I'm not always too comfortable with it.)

*gets the popcorn out*

Shouldn't an actual qualified agent be better at PR than this? Because public relations? That would be part of the job.

Yes, I'm Wicca

I'm not a witch per say

Ooo! Ooo! I get it! You have, perhaps, written Willow fic? The misspelling seems familiar.

Well hey...

Maybe she has money left over from her other nationwide books, even after sponsoring a poet:
( link here )

Tiny thing, but it's been niggling at me: did anyone else notice that Lee could not even spell her agent's name correctly on her website? All these odd spelling errors are making me wonder just how many people are writing.

Or how few.

Cheryl @38: "I have publishing contracts with four publishers, and nice in their way, but Roval is my favorite, because they work with the author one on one"

I may not be particularly experienced in this field, but a lot of the people here are and they'll surely correct me in this if I'm just mistaken, but I've never heard of a publisher that doesn't work with the author one-on-one. Hell, even PublishAmerica does (even if they do it badly).

I am sure many people ( especially in Europe, Scotland in particular) remember Hill and Hill Literary Agency, especially for being well known for their scams. Don't beleve me check out some Scottish newspapers. You know, I think every one should just stop and take a deep breath. Yes, I am guilty of listening to the advice of Christopher Hill, but that is the only mistake I made. I went back through old files I had saved and I have irrefutable proof, he coached me and did the ghost writing. I even have the receipts where I paid him for his services. My attorny told me because of the proof I have, I did no wrong and those that we to trash my name, well just hope you don't say anything bad about my publisher or I. My attorney is threatning to sue, because for once in my life, being a pack rat paid off.
LANAIA

Oh, it gets better...

"lania" posted a poem that she says appears in On Atlantis:

"Lost so long ago, almost totally forgotten by mankind, almost lost to various chapters, of time, itself
The thought of something so magical, has no room in the rat race of man today
Through out all ancient societies, you will find reference to the amulet, and all it's magic and wealth
But something of this magnitude, has no place in the rushed life of mortal man today, as he works, as he plays"

...

God in heaven, there's so much more than the excerpt above. I tried reading further, but my teeth tried to wrap around my head & eat my brain.

Leva, please pass the popcorn. Teresa, should I put this sixpack of Anchor Steam in the bathtub?

My company charges a one time fee $50.00 to consult, lay-out and discuss the project. I set you up with a critique, an illustrator or poet if you wish, to do the project. When its done, we will find a contract for you, I mainly work with Roval Publishing.

Permitting you for the sake of argument the existence of your attorney, Lanaia: You do know that the first thing a real attorney would tell you if they were actually going to file a lawsuit would be to shut up, right? So long as you keep your mouth running, no one's going to believe you're filing a lawsuit. At least, not with a real lawyer.

#60: I got that, I wanted to know where the word [cartooney] came from.

'Cartooney' originated in the anti-spam community. It's a portmanteau of 'cartoon' + 'attorney'. Imagine that the person making the bogus legal threat is being represented by Wile E. Coyote, Esq.

I set you up

A little nugget of truth.

I want more hilarious ESL threats as much as the next person, but it does seem a bit unfair to go into a battle of wits with someone so obviously unarmed. I guess she preys on wheelchair-bound glory hounds, so she kindof deserves it...

I dunno, this is like watching two entirely different genres collide. The hopeless idiots a la Fargo meet the hardboiled Shakespearean PIs a la Chandler.

Lanaia, I hate to break it to you, but you were scammed TWICE, once by Christopher Hill and once by your so-called agent. Roval Publishing is a vanity press and will publish anything for a fee.

Hi, Lanaia.

Did you or did you not say, in your YellBox on your webpage, "I have proof of my copt right and this work is totally mine. I guess some one wants a law suit"?

True lawyers will ask you to keep quiet if the papers were filed, there not yet.

Roval Publishing is a self-publishing company that specializes in digital and there are no fees. You pay for the package you wish to have.

I do believe in the 3 fold, I haven't made an offical threat yet, just words for now.

My lawyer's are highly recommended and I wouldn't trade them for anyone or anything.

My writing is the Underworld, not Law.

In response to post #71, I just got a bigger bucket of popcorn. So Cheryl charges a fee and mainly works with a pay to play pod publisher? Interesting.

(And I, too, keep reading "Roval" as "Ryoval." Which would be most appropriate.)

Ed G, #12: BWAHAHAHA!

Plagiarist's Agent, #32: Words of wisdom from another thread: Letters from lawyers mean something. Letters about lawyers don't.

Oh, and threatening/casting malicious spells will get you in a LOT of trouble with the Goddess. Do you really think that's going to scare anyone here? Oh... I see that later on, you say you're not a witch. Well, that I'll believe, since you have already demonstrated that you know nothing about the faith except the Halloween urban legends.

Go back to playing with your wart-nosed paper doll.

After looking at her website, I'm beginning to think that several people have taken advantage of a stroke victim. And not just the people she thinks have taken advantage of her.

It shouldn't surprise me that the vanity publishing and "author services" pros wouldn't hesitate to take a semi-coherent stroke victim's money. But it's sickening.

Seriously, Lanaia, if you're telling the truth about Hill & Hill, you need to take a good look at everyone who has taken your money to publish a book under your name. Your enemies are not the people on this web site.

My writing is the Underworld, not Law.

Oh, that explains it: they don't give English classes in Hell.

Unless she meant she tortures the English language forever in a boiling lake of fire fire, in which case-- hey! Apt metaphor!

Clueless, clueless, clueless.

A moment Googling your hosts here would be so informative. Then again...

Reading over Cheryl at #78

Wow. You would have to have sentence by sentence amnesia for this:

Roval Publishing is a self-publishing company that specializes in digital and there are no fees. You pay for the package you wish to have.

to even remotely make sense.

Also, your lawyer's are highly recommended? Please do fill in the blank! I'm imagining all sorts of nouns after lawyer's -, but Mad Libs is only fun for so long.

As for you, "agent" Cheryl:

True lawyers will ask you to keep quiet if the papers were filed, there not yet.

I do believe in the 3 fold, I haven't made an offical threat yet, just words for now.

Do you imagine you are fooling anyone here? Anyone new?

Underworld meaning I write about vampires, I also write mystery, sci-fi and I have children's series.

Research does the mind good. Good evening people.

I think all you people queried Cheryl Pillsbury and/or Roval Publishing and got REJECTED and that's why you are bringing all this hate.

(Someone had to come along and say that, so I thought it might as well be me.)

Lanaia, dear,

Could we talk meter for a minute? I see you've got ideas - the sine qua non of poetry - and you're using rhyme. ABAB is a good scheme (though you should perhaps rely more on similar sounds and less on using the same word twice over).

But what really walks a reader through the poem is the meter. It pulls them forward, gives the inner voice a rhythm. It lends momentum to the experience of reading a poem.

Wikipedia has some useful introductory articles on the subject. I'd suggest starting with this bit and then following the links to the various meters, particularly iambic pentameter.

Although it can seem daunting to write in a meter at first, you'll find the language naturally falls into the rhythm. And it helps you keep your line lengths even, which is generally considered a good trait.

I just got a bigger bucket of popcorn.

Excellent. Things look like they are still warming up and I would hate for us to run out, particularly as we seem to have good seats. Care for a beer?

Scraps, if you are going to be making lists, you might as well add that true agents don't charge fees.

Research does the mind good.

So do logic, common sense, and basic morals.

In AD 2007, writing was beginning.

What happen?

Somebody set up us the critique!

Yes they do and I'm a firmer believer in what I do and so do my friends. No one can ever change that.

Cheryl & Lanaia (or should i call you Mary, Lanaia?)

Do either of you have ANY remorse for an obvious theft? Whether or not Christopher Hill (yes i am aware of him.. i am as it happens Scottish) did write the offending words, you both should take some responsibility towards this.

Oh, out of interest, i do hope that the "proof" of Mr Hills involvement will be made apparent to Mr Gemmell's US agent (who, i am assured, is well versed in lawsuits and plagarism law)

I am a long time fan of David Gemmell, who attended his memorial service last October and with that time of year coming up again i can only think of the distress you are causing to Stella Gemmell (David's Window - in case you did not know that and i suspect that you did not.)

I really am quite disheartened that you are both too concerned with excuses and threats to actually put out a proper apology to Stella and the rest of his surviving family.

You should be ashamed of yourselves for being self-serving and grasping and you are both characters that David Gemmell certainly did NOT write about unless they came to a nasty end.

True lawyers will ask you to keep quiet if the papers were filed, there not yet.

Wrong.

Roval Publishing is a self-publishing company that specializes in digital and there are no fees. You pay for the package you wish to have.

If they're self-publishing, why does she need an agent?

I do believe in the 3 fold, I haven't made an offical threat yet, just words for now.

So "True witches will keep quiet if the spell is cast, its [sic-by-parallel] not yet"?

My lawyer's are highly recommended and I wouldn't trade them for anyone or anything.

Names?

My writing is the Underworld, not Law.

It's obviously not the latter, and from the way some of our resident Wiccas/Pagans/etc. are jumping on you, I don't think it's the former, either.

Yes, all parties have been informed of what took place and who set it up. We have placed the book on hold for a re-write so she can publish her book without anymore schandal and insults.

Placed on hold, sorry, long day and night.

Cheryl

Still no words of concern for the family of David Gemmell?? It would be nice if you could clarify that there has been a conversation and you ARE attempting to remedy the situation properly.

Lanaia #68:
I think I can accept that you were coached (and scammed) by Christopher Hill, but why then did he end up doing the actual writing? Why would a newbie writer (you) hire a ghost writer? Wouldn't you want to see your own work in a book with your own name on the cover?

We have placed the book on hold for a re-write

Cheryl:

Well, my lawyer demands that you contact him. I have been told that he will be more than happy to remove the potentially "slanderous" material that you claim I have made from the webpages in question.

However, my lawyer demands you clean his outdoor grill first. It is very dirty and has some kind of black junk all on the lid, and inside it, and on the rack and gummed up in the propane tanks.

He also demands you use Formula 409 brand cleaner and Billo pads, not "any o'that generic store brand junk" either.

My lawyer says he wants you to do so and comply "before this Saturday", because he's planning "a really important legal barbeque".

I will provide his contact details if you'd like.

At the risk of saying something extremely obvious, the purported Cheryl Pillsbury has given her email address as "fknight420@charter.net", which sounds more like an F. Knight than a C. Pillsbury, so I wonder if a troll is having some fun at our expense.

That website has lots and lots of articles and just... lots of written stuff on it. Has anyone checked any of these others for plagiarism?

http://www.alongstoryshort.net/Archives.html

Woof. I don't envy the lawyers that task.

Yes they do and I'm a firmer [sic] believer in what I do and so do my friends.

No, they don't. Scammers can protest this all they want (and yes, you’re clearly a scam artist; agent who takes $ to hook up “writer” with self-publisher = scam artist), but the FIRST THING that you learn in this biz is that money flows FROM the agent to the author, not the other way round. Every PUBLISHED author knows this, which is why scammers like you prey on the weak, the hopeful, and the uninformed.

And we’re still waiting for the apology to Gemmell and his family.

If it's a troll, it's got a good act.

For an agent, that isn't a very professional address.

F. Knight than a C. Pillsbury, so I wonder if a troll is having some fun at our expense.

Nope, a google search turns up that she's a former trekker and big Forever Knight fan.

@12, I'm not sure what horrible things Ryoval Publishing would get up to, but I'm fairly sure that they wouldn't be as unoriginal and, well, dull as blatant plagiarism. Say what you like about the dear departed imaginary Baron, he was certainly... inventive.

(That book is the only one of Bujold's I find physically hard to read. I guess it strikes close to home if you had a twin brother, even if he never had a chance to become as driven and somewhat loony as Mark.)

A slightly different take on the situation, from Writer Beware.

I've done my due diligence: the Wikipedia page has been updated, in the blandest terms possible cause NPOV is a shy beastie and I didn't want to scare it off. Nor did I wish to suffer the tenfold wrath of someone who writes about witches!

#102, Cheryl Pillsbury used to write Forever Knight fanfiction.

You can find her work here, including links to her publishing site.

(Personally, I think the Gemmel family is entitled to demand an apology, but none of us are entitled to demand one for them.)

Lyli, at #62: we still haven't gotten an additional sock puppet, but we've gotten other things -- evident confusion between this blog and Dear Author, magickal threats, possibly magickal (at least invisible, though that could be done with technology, I suppose) lawyers, pleas to sympathy, a noticeable dearth of anything resembling repentance or apologies to David Gemmell's family in the recent comments from plaigiarist and agent, statements of blind support for friends and clients... will those do instead? Or should we hold out for another sock puppet?

Victoria Straus just posted:

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2007/10/victoria-strauss-christopher-hill-redux.html

It might not be Lanaia's doing...

Lori Coulson @ 53: Oh, I suppose that most Wiccans in the U.S. haven't switched to the metric system yet. It can be much more convenient if you have people repeatedly harming each other in turn.

Our Esteemed Hosts, re: #68, and #s 32, 38, 46, etc. -- IP check, please?

That Writer Beware link convinces me more of what I said earlier: I think that, whatever her poor behavior in reacting to all this, Lanaia is just a bad writer and a stroke victim who has been prey to an unusually shameless set of scammers. One of whom is posting here, and is to my mind far more contemptible than Lanaia. Conning the ignorant is one thing; conning stroke victims ought to be beneath anyone.

Er... whoops! Undid previous wiki edit, readded to main page with reference to correct Gemmell book. I spellchecked but forgot to content check. :P

I doubt any regular here thought otherwise, but as a lawyer myself (with all the standard disclaimers about not being licensed in states other than Michigan and not undertaking to give anyone legal advice), let me point about that absolutely no basis for a defamation action is presented by anything said here . . .

An apology was not demanded on behalf of the Gemmell family, however, it would be very nice to see one.

Since Mr Hill won't be making one, it's only right that one should come from Cheryl Pillsbury on Mary Kellis' behalf.

We're getting to the point of Can't-Tell-The-Players-Without-A-Scorecard.

So:

We have Cheryl T. Pillsbury, Agent.

Cheryl is a fee-charger who has published her own work with:

A) XLibris Corporation, a pay-to-play vanity
B) PublishAmerica, a notorious vanity press
(twice!)
C) Outskirts Press

Who or what is Outskirts, you may ask? Yet another pay-to-play vanity press. Look ye at their main page:

The Future of Book Publishing is Here!

• Keep all your rights and more of the profits
  
• Set your own royalty and retail price
  
• Interior formatting & cover design is included
  
• Free marketing COACH after publication
  
• Print runs from 1 to 1000s
  

Ms. Pillsbury's favorite, however, is Roval Publishing, another POD pay-to-play vanity.

One of Cheryl Pillsbury's clients is the next character in our cast: Lanaia Lee.

Lanaia is not only an author, but a poet. And Cheryl seems to be not only Lanaia's agent, but co-author. Note that Lanaia's poetry allegedly appears in at least one of Cheryl's Angus Grady books.

There's more: A G Press, owned by Cheryl Pillsbury, appears to be involved in some manner in preparing Lanaia's forthcoming (yet oddly familiar)Of Atlantis for Roval Publishing.

I will make sure they know about this and dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca. says Cheryl.

Later, Cheryl says "I'm not a witch per say, [sic]...."

I do wish she'd make up her mind.

Lanaia has a witchcraft connection:

Her grandmother, a self-professed black witch, raised Lanaia after her mother died when she was eight years old.

Lanaia, who is apparently referred to as "Mary" by her agent, claims that she didn't plagiarize Dark Prince by David Gemmell, because she paid someone else to write her book. That someone else is allegedly Christopher Hill.

Christopher Hill, current whereabouts unknown, is/was a fee-charging literary agent who (depending on when you asked and who you asked) either lived in luxury in Spain or in a Council flat outside Edinburgh. Mr. Hill (and a number of other people who may have been his sockpuppets who appeared on messageboards to defend him) engaged in assorted frauds, including telling various of his clients that they had gotten major contracts with major American publishers. Whether he also engaged in ghostwriting, I know not.

I'm sure that whatever it was he handed to Lanaia, said Lanaia would have been aware that she, personally, hadn't written the material that appeared under her byline.

Which brings us all back to Jane Little, currently laboring under a ten-fold curse, who, while she may not have broken the story, certainly had fun with it.

To think that poor woman paid C. Hill four hundred a month...and this is what she got in return.

Thanks for the link, Victoria.

Much as it pains me, I feel compelled to point out that she did say: I apologize to Mr. Hemmel's memory and his family on her message board earlier.

If memory servers, Christopher Hill makes many of the same grammar errors as Cheryl Pillsbury, though I seem to remember slightly fewer typos and misspellings. For what it's worth.

If I am reading Victoria Strauss correctly, it is not out of the question that Hill rewrote stuff that was originally Lanaia's, then stuck the first chapter of the Gemmell book on the front, with Lanaia's characters. Lanaia sounds ignorant enough of real publishing -- abetted by people like her "agent" to sincerely believe that the writing was "hers" by all regular publishing standards. That's not much of a defense, but I repeat that if she's a stroke victim -- and I think her prose lends credence to that -- well, she's at worst a tool of much worse people.

Memory serves, even. There is a natural law of the universe that one cannot point out someone else's misspelling without making a spelling booboo oneself.

What sort of legal recourse does she have? I am a wee bit unsympathetic, I'll admit. Her actions since this blew out of the water, or I should say the actions made in her name, have been damning to her reputation and her credibility. But if this is the case what sort of legal action might she face and what sort might she be able to bring ?out?... My brain just fizzled and I can't think of the correct term there.

I also posted this over at Ms. Strauss blog

Aww, I got reverted. It hasn't happened until Reuters says so.

Velma @ #113. I think it makes up for the lack of extra sock puppets.

Cheryl Pillsbury wrote:

Underworld meaning I write about vampires, I also write mystery, sci-fi and I have children's series.

You said you had children's series. Is that some kind of disease? I need enlightment!

This thread just got me a visit from the police.

That is to say, a neighbourhood cop was walking past and heard these bizarre sounds from inside and knocked on the door to find out if I was all right.

Well, she was sort of right: I *was* choking. With laughter. I don't think I've read anything so amusing in years.

(Ms. Pillsbury's grammar and general coherence are truly *remarkable*. I'm not sure whether to consider this whole affair pitiable, despicable, or awe-inspiring, so I'm just settling for utterly hilarious.)

My take is the same as Scraps' take.

It's probably worth everyone reading Victoria's account. Ms. Lee, at least, may have been the victim in this particular case. I'm inclined to have some compassion--or at least to withhold hostility--for her, and to save that for the real scammers in this case. (And yes, I agree there's more than one.)

I want to thank you all for this afternoon's amusement.

Dear Dog. What a fiasco. See, now if it were me, I'd be shocked and horrified and outraged when I realized what my ghostwriter had done. Of course, I might have googled the opening line, just to be sure. Then again, maybe not.

I wouldn't be defensive and throwing around baseless threats of legal action. Apparently Cheryl went to the PA/BB school of law. Dragoons!

It's really such a shame to see two people so obviously clueless about publishing trying to have an argument with those who do.

Really, Cheryl... Xlibris AND PA??? And you really think you know about publishing?? You take MONEY from people to hook them up with vanity presses?

I'm sure we'll be seeing your name on one of Victoria and Ann's list in the near future.

And don't threaten people with magic. It makes you look foolish, and tells those of us who know how to use it properly that you...don't. Or else you'd never even consider such a thing for fear of it whiplashing back on you. Times three. Believe me, you don't want that.

For people who throw stones at glasses houses should be very cautious about speaking before they know the truth.

The cliche is "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones". It means "If you have a problem, you shouldn't point out that other people have the same problem"; it has nothing to do with shaky claims, which I believe is what you're alleging here. As far as I know no one at Making Light has ever been accused of plagarism.

...dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold.

Who the heck is Jane?

Yes, I'm Wicca.

If so, you should know that 1)it's threefold, not tenfold and 2)making threats of magical attack is a big ol' no-no.

I was just informed, the author has already set the motions for the lawsuit, be prepared.

"Oooooh, I'm so scared." Name! That! Quote!

You were told by the lawyer not to post anything related to this issue, first amendement does not apply.

Situations in which the First Amendment does not apply are few and far between, and this is assuredly not one of them. You may with to read up.

I have made a copy of this site for proof,

No need; it's not going anywhere.

Have a ducky day.

Dude, you just have to wonder. I doubt she's got the capacity for that much sarcasm, which implies that it's just something she appends to everything...

Shadowsong @ 127... Aww, I got reverted

You fell inside an Evolving Machine stuck in reverse?

Bloody hell. Way to cure fits of hilarity.

I've just read Victoria Strauss's post. This is awful, if she's right and this is a severely disabled woman being conned.

The whole thing reeks of desperation, to some extent on Lanaia's part (which is entirely forgiveable) and much more on Hill's (which is not).

An entire fake manuscript is probably more work than even a forger as prolific as Hill would normally be expected to do. I can almost see Hill sitting there, this subset of his scam threatening to fall apart around him, desperately cobbling together anything he can lay his hands on now that his mark has demanded proof that he'd been doing something useful.

(I still wonder why Hill does what he does. It sounds like it's much more work than actually doing the job he's pretending to do would be. Maybe this too is a sign of desperation: he started out with a quick scam, got deeper, and by the time the work mounted to the degree that it would be easier to do the job honestly, everybody in the field knew who he was, so he had no *choice* but to be dishonest: there's no way real publishers would give him the time of day, or believe claims of honesty even if they were true. Just a guess...)

Serge @ 135: Exactly. I need to be careful; I fear my opposable thumbs may be the next to go.

(Don't mind me, I've been looking at cute polydactyl kitties. I have "opposable thumbs" and "teaching cats to use matches" on the brain.)

Here's what happened:

I received an email granting me the honor of doing an interview with the author. A sample interview was included as well as a link to the work so I could see for myself her work. I emailed a fantasy author, Ilona Andrew, and she came back within five minutes saying this was Gemmell’s work. So we should all thank Ilona. She then posted at Gemmell's fan forum - Legend Readers.

I held off posting about the plagiarism issue. I emailed the Mary/Lanaia and received emails back from her and the agent to see if they wanted to retract the claims they were making on the website. The author claimed “If Atlantis” (instead of “Of Atlantis”) was her own work; she made threatening legal noises and so did her agent. So I posted.

I await the suit papers and the boils. Will keep you all posted on both accounts.

My sympathy for the author isn't very high because she is trying to pass off someone else's work (ie. the ghostwriter) as her unique voice; as the voice of her heart which seems pretty dishonest to me.

Anyway, I had to get permission from Ilona Andrew to tell how I found out and she acquiesced after some pressure.

Keep em' coming, you bettter be very afraid, jane as an sdult I thought you would throughly reasearch, well you heard Victoria Strass, she knowa!
Lanaik

This is from Linaia's bio:

"I write because I feel each person has something unique to share with the world and writing is my gift to share"

Are you freaking kidding??? You actually write? Wow, I'm surprised you'd say that since the notion has become rather doubtful over the course of the last hours. And what is it that you have to "share with the world"? Your stupidity? Please save it!

It's completely amusing how you could say "writing is my gift to share." Is it, really? In that case, your writing is rather boring and monotonous, for it reads:

Ctrl C + Ctrl V + Ctrl C + Crtl V...

Good luck with that!

shadowsong @ 137... I take it you've lost your sixth finger by now. Don't stay inside the Machine too long or you'll revert to the Dubya level.

Here's a screenshot of Lanaia's apology to Mr. Gemmell and his family.

Next, I note that Lanaia makes a lot of errors with adjacent letters on the keyboard that fall between the right and left hands (G/H, T/Y).

Lori, #28, those are the two most common types of strokes. I had a watershed infarct (not my brain) which happens when you don't get blood to your brain for a while. Mine was caused by being given nifedipine sublingually while in the hospital and it dropped my BP so low so fast that parts of my brain died from lack of oxygen.

Oy vey, those folks should be quarantined as a danger to the public... after all, the stupid might be catching!

It does give me an idea for an amusing short-story opening, but this might well have been used already:

Start it off with the first few lines of some really classic, memorable opening, then just as the reader recognizes it, the paragraph breaks to:

WHAP! The pages of the manuscript scattered down the wall. "Darn, that didn't even make a decent bang."

and go on with your story featuring an editor as protagonist....

You know, guys, I've had three strokes, including the big one that came with a coma. I was probably smarter than Mary to start with, but I'm not a "stroke victim" as the later posts mean. Not everybody loses all sense when they have strokes. I can't account for her miscarriages.

Crap. Andrews. Ilona Andrews.

Lanaia # 139

Keep em' coming, you bettter be very afraid, jane as an sdult I thought you would throughly reasearch, well you heard Victoria Strass, she knowa!
Lanaik

Stop making fun of yourself, Lanaia. How you can say you're a writer if you can't proof-read what you write? You're pathetic.

I brought brownies...

I feel like I should feel sorry for someone -- the Gemmell family, I suppose -- but I'm laughing too hard. Woo, these people are silly. You say money changed hands here?

But, daaammnnn. I do seem to miss all the fun.

Count me in as another Bujold fan who keeps seeing Ryoval Publishing.

While I have a small modicum of sympathy for Ms. Lee, who seems to have been doubly scammed, I have none for her agent.

I DO have much sympathy for the poor, abused commas forced to dress in drag as periods. Or maybe it's the other way round. Either way, "Agent" Pillsbury's approach to punctuation reminds me of this quote from Terry Pratchett's Jingo: There may be a lot of things I'm not good at, thought Vimes, but at least I don't treat the punctuation of a sentence like a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey...

Yep, it looks like money changed hands. From Lanaia to Cheryl, and from Lanaia to Christopher Hill, and from Lanaia to Roval.

What's wrong with that picture?

I've done some stupid things in my life. One of the things I learned early on about the enterprise of doing stupid things is that you really have no choice but to own up to them when you get called on having done them.

What's the big deal? Everybody does stupid things in their lives. The only unforgivable thing about having done them is trying to lie about them and get all aggressive about them afterward. I just don't see how people can be so stupid about something like this.

You can't be forgiven for half-assed things you make up so you can ask to be forgiven for them in lieu of owning up to the actual stupid thing you did. People aren't that stupid. I guess people somehow forget they are dealing with people in these situations. People know people, better than anybody does. Nobody falls for it.

Just give it up. Just say "I did an idiot thing. Here's the exact idiot thing I did. I did an even more idiot thing in trying to make you think I didn't do the idiot thing in the first place. I'm sorry."

If you mean it, if you say it sincerely (remember: people know people so you won't fool anybody if you try to bullshit them), you will be shocked, appalled even, at how quickly you are forgiven.

Cheryl@78 wrote: "My lawyer's are highly recommended and I wouldn't trade them for anyone or anything."

Uh. Lanaia, if you're still around - are you paying money to any lawyer who's been recommended by Cheryl? I really think you're better off getting your own lawyer who's got nothing to do with Hill, Roval, or Cheryl, or anyone else who's ever asked you for money to help publish your book.

It is awfully convenient, though, that the one person the author is pointing her finger at cannot be located, and therefore, cannot be expected to rise to his own defense. How very tidy.

Just a note about the stroke issue.

I am not a medical professional. I am not qualified to judge whether this woman actually had a debilitating stroke or not, or whether this particular stroke had anything to do with her judgment (or lack thereof).

Whether it is used as an excuse or not, it is not something I feel worthy of further discussion without more and better documentation.

Others will likely disagree, but that's my buck-fifty.

If I'm reading Victoria right, Lanaia paid Christopher Hill $400/month for two years to ghost-write her book.

That works out to nearly $10K.

For less than half of that she could have had a real book written by a real writer, and it wouldn't have taken any two years to get it, either.

The two biggest villains I see in this piece are Cheryl and Christopher. Roval is just a bush-league POD/vanity, no more or less honest than any of a thousand others just like it.

Lanaia -- I think there's a problem with the way she sees the world, but with guides like Cheryl and Christopher there wasn't much chance of her ever finding out anything about writing or publishing. It isn't beyond the realm of belief that Cheryl was playing witchie-poo headgames on Lanaia the whole time.

Other subjects: miscarriages and stroke can both be related to hypertension. Lanaia's disability from the stroke would be directly related to what part(s) of her brain were affected. We know there's some motor dysfunction. I wouldn't be at all surprised by some cognitive or emotional issues.

jane as an sdult I thought you would throughly reasearch, well you heard Victoria Strass, she knowa!
Lanaik

My dear, you're hardly one who should be admonishing anyone about a lack of research when you can't even bother to research the text found within your own book.

So either she did it, and is trying her best to cover it up with a well known ghost writer (unlikely as the Victoria Strauss article does lend credit to her defense), or she payed $400 per month to an individual whom she knew was a conman/scammer and still had the audacity to deny it after being caught. She then removes comments from her site but not the offending material? Nothing she or her agent have done since this came to light warrants any kind of sympathy at all.

Also, is #139 really Lanaia (unsure of the spelling, as it seems the posts author is as well)?

Sorry I was supposed to type well known conman, not ghostwriter.

The IP numbers for all the "Lanaia" posts are consistent with one another. The IP numbers for all the "Cheryl Pillsbury" posts are consistent with one another. They come from two different ISPs.

Not that that proves anything.

The whole thing is weird.

A suggestion has been raised elsewhere that perhaps the Scottish tabloids might be interested in the story of a local scammer taking a disabled woman for $400 a month and giving her a plagiarized book in return.

Ah, was just curious, as it seemed an even nastier read than the others. Painful to read, although this time of the morning doesn't help with it. Everything worth being said has already been so though so off to bed with me.

DB (comment 154), did you read Victoria Strauss's post? The evidence presented there is more than just Lanaia Lee pointing her finger at someone who can't be located.

Marilee, I certainly did not mean to paint any broad picture of stroke sufferers, and I very much apologize if it came across that way.

Marilee @143 (and very much tangential to topic)

That site you linked with the brain slices has just absorbed over half an hour of time I should have spent sleeping.

Thanks!

(Braiiiiiinnnnzzzz....)

A realise this is entirely beside the main point, but I feel it needs to be picked up:

Dorothy Rothschild @ #16 writes (about a different plagiarism case) I have to say that while I understand the logic of properly citing your own work, it does seem odd to be accused of plagiarizing yourself.

I don't see anything in the linked article that says he was accused of plagiarizing from himself. The phrase "accused of plagiarizing parts of his 1984 doctoral dissertation" is admittedly ambiguous, but the details provided make it clear that what is meant is that parts of the dissertation were created by plagiarizing from others.

Now, back to your regular (regular? it's like clockwork, lately) entertainment...

I noticed the "400 dollars a month for two years" fee C. Hill got, just like Mr. Macdonald. That's a nice chunk of change--but it isn't enough to live on.

Is L. Lee the only client Hill had during that time? Is 'Of Atlantis' the only book that will appear from Hill's ghostly fingers? Or will other wistful wannabes eventually pop up with 'manuscripts' manufactured from filched first chapters and identical (or nearly identical, given name changes) hind ends?

If I were this kind of plagiarist, I wouldn't want to spend two years of my time for a measly 400 bucks a month--US dollars or otherwise. But for 400 a month x 10 clients--okay.

(R. takes her cynical self and stuffs it back under her rock.)

PixelFish, #150: Yeah, now I can't read it any other way. Ed, that was the equivalent of a really compelling earworm!

There was a news story recently about some guy who went into a supermarket and tried to get change for a $1,000,000 dollar bill. When the store refused to cash it, and also refused to give him back his very obviously counterfeit money, he became angry and started breaking stuff.

I see very little difference between that guy (who was apparently dumb enough to believe the bill was real) and Lanaia (who was dumb enough to pay a "ghostwriter" she'd already been told was a scam artist and an "agent" who is nearly illiterate to publish a novel she knew she didn't write and probably didn't even read.) In both cases they were victims of a con, yes, but it was their own greed, dishonesty, and stupidity that led them there.

Wandering in after a long day...I hardly know whether to weep or giggle. Probably both. I think Victoria's right and Laiana (?) has been taken by Hill, Pillsbury, and who the hell knows what else.

I feel awful for Gemmel's family; this is hardly what they need to be dealing with...

I just love the bit at #71 where Cheryl actually admits - up front and unblushing - to being a scam agent. Think of it: she's persuaded some number of deeply clueless people to pay her to send their work to a vanity press that then charges them to print it. This is a cottage-industry scam as perennial as dust bunnies, but Cheryl has been bottom-feeding for so long that she's forgotten that there is such a thing as real publishing.

But that's not all, no, no, wait, there's more! Some subset of those deeply clueless people pay someone else to write the work in the first place, and then claim that it's their own. Well, it is, isn't it? They bought it, didn't they? Paid down good money for it, too!

Oh dear, oh dear. Why do all the really cool things happen while I'm asleep? Twelve hours time difference will do that to you...

Claude, I'll take that beer, and thank you. Have one of these prawns, straight off the barbie.

Slander can cause a major lawsuit from the author and the publisher mentioned, because I will make sure they know about this and dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca.

Cheryl? "Wicca" is the noun. "Wiccan" is the verb. You are not Wicca any more than that one soldier ant was the colony.

(Which movie was that? I get them confused. Antz or the other one? I think it was Antz.)

As for threatening Dear Jane with nightmare hexes, you've already been told several times on this page that such action falls way outside the ethical constraints of Wicca. I've known some witches to content themselves with putting photos of nasty people in the freezer, though.

(My delight in Making Light renews--yes, even "tenfold"--as its denizens trounce Cheryl equally for lawyer-cartooney, for being a fee-charging agent, and for inappropriate use of religion.)

I'm sorry I came too late to read this thread from the beginning, but...

Is this woman saying she hired a ghost writer to pen a novel for a vanity publisher? Or have I misread something?

If so it's horribly sad, like hiring a models to stand in for you in your wedding photos.

Damn, and I missed out on all this today?

Where is my popcorn? My soda? My soundtrack?

They can't make movies this good...

(munch, munch, munch....)

"Cartooney" comes from news.admin.net-abuse.email. It's a cartoon of a lawsuite (spelling from the same source).

A real lawyer wouldn't advise a client to shut up until the papers are filed. A real lawyer would advise a client to shut up until the judge decides how much they'll get (and even longer, if there might be an appeal).

The ratio of lawsuits threatened on the Internet to those actually filed is approximately infinity to three.

Is it okay to wear spats and a silk cravat with a law suit? It is after Labor Day and all . . .

Seth @ 173:
The ratio of lawsuits threatened on the Internet to those actually filed is approximately infinity to three.

That deserves to be a button or a sig or both.

Nicole@170--Actually, "Wiccan" is both an adjective and a noun...but not a verb.

/pedantry

Plagiarism, scam agents, pay-to-publish...egad, this whole situation leaves me shaking my head in wonder...

Syd, you are correct. Your pedantry is appreciated. (Man, I hate it when I sabotage myself with this sort of thing.) What I should have said was, "Wicca is the religion; 'Wiccan' is the word describing a practitioner of the religion. You, madam, are not my religion, and you're probably not of it, either."

But speaking of Wicca, the "infinity to three" ratio of lawsuits threatened to lawsuits actually filed sounds weirdly consonant with the whole "threefold law" subthread. Hee.

wrt the Mary/Lanaia names, the blurb here (posted back on June 17th) begins, "My name is Mary Kellis pen name Lanaia Lee. I have a series of books, known as Of Atlantis, possibly the next Harry Potter, according to my literary agent."

*speechless*

It seems to be a characteristic of the scam artist that they believe money and contracts wash away all sin.

In this they seem to be like many otherwise reputable large businesses that might be pointed to as examples of the sociopathic tendency in corporate governance.

The world is filled with liars, even the politicians are outsourcing the process, and, at times, honesty seems futile.

I am now tempted to write a short story set in the publishing business, in a world where magic exists. After all, it stands to reason that, when you plagiarise a spell, you'll get worse things than writs coming through your door.

(That's why pirate editions are called pirate editions. They're printed on board ships at sea, in order to protect them from hexes, which have difficulty crossing water...)

I do something wrong - in this case, plagiarise a writer whose shoes I am not fit to lick. I get caught out. I say, no, it was my agent (ie person employed to do something for me, NOT my 'literary agent')

And that makes it okay?

Er, no. A principal is legally responsible for their agent's acts if they are within the terms of the contract.

The buck stops with you, Lainia, whatever your state of health.

ajay:

That's why pirate editions are called pirate editions. They're printed on board ships at sea, in order to protect them from hexes, which have difficulty crossing water...

If you include barefoot sales agents (because the sales system for books is subscription-based as Twain described) so that spells thrown at them will be earthed harmlessly and a protagonist who loses a finger...well, it would be closer to the theme of the thread wouldn't it?

(Actually, it sounds like lots and lots of fun!)

Paul A @ 164 - while the article itself never directly states that copying his own thesis is plagiarism, the headers do: 'Poshard Faces New Plagiarism Allegations / Report Says SIU President Copied Parts Of Master's Thesis'. Given that this connection *isn't* played up in the article, it may be a case of 'let's use the word that gets attention rather than something more accurate that isn't as jazzy'; however, they're selling this article as a) more alleged plagiarism through b) copying [his own] master's thesis.

Dorothy Rothschild: I thought the piece was saying that he'd plagarised parts of both his master's thesis and his PhD.

182: Ah, here I suffer from not actually having read any David Gemmell.

Naturally, in this world, the agents take a percentage of more than just your earnings. And the dividing line between the professions of "editor" and "exorcist" can, occasionally, get a little blurry.
Working title: "Mis-spelled".

It is possible to plagiarise your own work; a PhD is supposed to be an original bit of research, so if you don't bother do do any more research and fill it up with what you've done for your Masters, that's plagiarism. Drawing on stuff you've already done is absolutely fine if you make it clear that that's what you're doing, of course, quoting and referencing it in the normal way.

Ye gods and small fishes.

Abi having given advice on writing poetry, I can do no more than take a line of Cheryl's as an example of how it might be done(since it happens to be in iambic pentameter, through no fault of her own).

I haven't any sense, but I can jaw
as well as any idiot out here --
my writing is the Underworld, not law.

My spelling's bad, you try it with a claw,
but writing is to me the thing most dear;
I haven't any sense, but I can jaw.

I have no dog, yet I am a cat's paw,
and now you have me weeping in my beer:
my writing is the Underworld, not law.

You are such beasts, my nerves are now quite raw
and I am feeling very odd and queer --
I haven't any sense, but I can jaw.

The words keep sticking in my witchy craw,
I'm trying to behave stern and austere,
my writing is the Underworld, not law.

My feelings have been rubbed completely raw,
you people set my mind all out of gear.
I haven't any sense, but I can jaw;
my writing is the Underworld, not law.

A Formal Apology:
We apologize for the pain this situation has caused. We were unaware of it until yesterday, 10/11/07. The book has been placed on hold for a re-write.
I'm a Trekkie, not a Trekker, yes, I write Forever Knight stories and yes I'm a fan of the show.
The blame for this should be on Mr. Hill, Lanaia is an innocent pawn in this disaster, it was brought to my attention and we took action. But people seem to enjoy slamming people with hurtful insults instead of giving the person a chance to research and solve the issue. If we could find this Mr. Hill, he would be a hurting puppy and Jane Little is no better. She was informed not to post, so her and James did, this could do some serious damage when this is solved and how can you take back the hurtful words that were said. I thought we were innocent before guilty. Now you know why I prefer the Underworld then this world. It's amazing on how people never learn or grow up and don't use conversation as a tool to solve things without throwing nasty words at each other.

#170 "(Which movie was that? I get them confused. Antz or the other one? I think it was Antz.)"

I think you do mean Antz, the other one was A Bug's Life and didn't have a noticable soldier caste.

Fragano @187:
Nice. But not the line that inspired me.

I woke this morning, and I found a duck
Asleep beside me in the tousled bed.
I sat up, feeling something on my head,
And reached to touch it, shouting, "What on earth?"*
My toothpaste was all feathers, and my soap
Left slimy pond-weed trailing from my hands.
I got no toast - the quacking bread demands
Were just too much. I simply couldn't cope.
My trip to work was very much a trip -
I stumbled over drakes and stepped on hens.
They shat on papers, shed on all my pens,
While ducklings drank my coffee, every sip.
And worse - it's nine more days till they're away:
The tenfold curse of "Have a ducky day!"

-----
* well, something like it, anyway

ajay @ 185... the dividing line between the professions of "editor" and "exorcist" can, occasionally, get a little blurry

Teresa waves her hand, a loud sound of thunder reverberates throughout the fluorosphere, and nothing is left of ajay but a spot of soot on the floor and a puff of smoke slowly drifting upward.

Abi @ 190... I found a duck Asleep beside me in the tousled bed

I shall pond-er what that means. Or maybe I should call Duck Freud, since Poulet Froid is busy with another patient.

Saying it's everybody else's fault rarely counts as A Formal Apology.

Abi #190: Wonderful! You could, however, change 'What on earth?' to 'What the heck?'

Fragano, your poem at 187 has made my morning.

Cheryl, just as a data point: real apologies don't come with incoherent attacks on and threats to other people. Nor do they come in the passive form -- "the pain this situation has caused" -- as if it had come mysteriously out of the ether, not caused by anyone specific.

But could you be specific? What, precisely, are you apologizing for? Your words could be an apology for the sudden rain yesterday that caused mud to stain the hem of my skirt, or for Jim getting a full sour, rather than a garlic dill, with his sandwich. There's no responsibility for anything specific in it, and that makes me curious.

Fragano @194:
You're right, though anything so completely clunky that the reader stops and realises what I didn't say will do.

Fragano, your poem at 187 has made my morning.

Cheryl, just as a data point: real apologies don't come with incoherent attacks on and threats to other people. Nor do they come in the passive form -- "the pain this situation has caused" -- as if it had come mysteriously out of the ether, not caused by anyone specific.

But could you be specific? What, precisely, are you apologizing for? Your words could be an apology for the sudden rain yesterday that caused mud to stain the hem of my skirt, or for Jim getting a full sour, rather than a garlic dill, with his sandwich. There's no responsibility for anything specific in it, and that makes me curious.

I have apologized, I have pulled the book until its resolved, sorry I can't get Mr. Hill out of my head, considering that's where it started and I have written proof. There's nothing left that I can do, I'm truly sorry this happened, but I see no apologies for the nasty name calling. I don't know what else I can do.

(How did my comment post twice? And where can I get a garlic dill at this hour?)

I want a pickle! Where are they giving out the pickles?

Full many a glorious morning have I seen...

but few that have started with me laughing so hard and wincing so thoroughly before 9 am...

Ref. 179: It's been my experience that scam artists use contracts quite often to intimidate their victims and make it appear that the law is on the side of the scam artist, thus improving the scam artist's odds of getting away with the fraud.

Ref. 188: Cheryl, presumption of innocence is only applicable in a court of law, not in a court of public opinion. The public is free to presume what it wants. Likewise, folks are free to ignore your demands that they not post. Consequently, because you tried to squelch public comment instead of disclosing the facts, you immediately took on the appearance of guilt. You've only yourself to blame for that.

- Plagia Rising -

A trilogy of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft!

By Mark Mitchell

Chapter 1.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a golden child sitting alone is in want of dead father. Pip Steerpike von Huckelberry sat in the doorway wondering why every happy family was alike while every unhappy family was unhappy in its own way. Aunt Polly came out of the top turret of the castle Gormenghast, surrounded by her endless coterie of mulling white elephants, yelling as was her wont: "PIP! YOU PIIIIIPP" she would be at it all day he reflected.
Lazily the young prince got up, and ambled down the stairs, scuffing his bejewelled slippers as he walked. He whistled a tune that was all the rage. It was not very many days since his father had given him some useful advice that he'd been turning over in his mind ever since, that advice being "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make an ugly woman your wife." The old man's lot of happiness was just about run out though, and the old girl was not so bad as all that. Pip wasn't above patricide and matrimony in the service of naked ambition, he'd long ago decided he would turn out the villain of his own life and be damn proud of it.

It seems increasingly likely that I really will undertake the enterprise that has been preoccupying my imagination for some time, namely to become the foremost living plagiarist of my generation!

Ollie: "Well! This is a pretty pickle you've gotten us into."

Stan (crying): "I'm sorry, Ollie, they were out of dill."

Velma #195/197: Thank you!

naw, I'm just joshing you, I already began that long time ago. Y'all will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which y'all have regarded with such evil forebodings.

bryan @ 203

A neat mashup of genres you've got there; even erotica. 'Naked ambition' indeed; as we all know Ambition's a whore, and kings and whores are the stuff of great literature (and occasional rebellions).

Abi #196: You're absolutely right.

Well I figured it was a good time to write about naked ambition given that this is afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I'm lying in bed with my catamite. I certainly hope that beastly Ali doesn't come in, or that horrible old archbishop show up to see me.

Cheryl @ 188 said it all (I've corrected the punctuation)

We were innocent before, guilty now.

Can lurk no longer.

Pillsbury claims Jane Little, who posted the excerpt and the original work to open discussion on plagiarism, is as bad as the man she claims did the plagiarizing and scammed her and her client.

This is a weird sense of the wacky.

LOLCatamite!

bryan #203: Very nice. I like the calypso touch.

Cheryl, what about giving Mr. Hill the curse you carelessly handed out to the rest of us? Or, um...lawsuit. Yeah Yeah, a LAWSUIT has possibilities here.

You and your so-called author are a joke. You are less professional than my preschooler, who has a better grasp of grammar and typing. Your author, who had the book she toiled over for years ghost written, is about as professional as my preschooler.

You both deserve each other. Now go away and let the real authors, editors, and agents work.

David Gemmel's family deserves a real apology.

Why did the old man have to die? No reason, because it was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. He could see by his watch, without taking his hand from the left grip of the stairwell that gyred the central staircase, that it was actually eight-thirty in the morning.

He boiled at the inefficiencies of his ancestral home. This very lack of punctuality was as good excuse as any to kill his old dad, the bugger. So yeah, that was it. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen - not on time. Fuck the world, and fuck it now.

bryan

You can think of it as creating inhabitants of a new virtual world: Second Hand.

Cheryl Pillsbury @188:It's amazing on how people never learn or grow up and don't use conversation as a tool to solve things without throwing nasty words at each other.

At first, I found the lack of self-awareness needed to write this sentence astounding. Her first comment on this thread consisted of vague threats of legal action and magic.

However, on reconsideration, perhaps this is really an admission on her part. Perhaps she's really making a statement about herself, showing great self-awareness. (The flamer bingo worthy statement would have had "some people" rather than just "people" after all.)

She still charges her writers for her representation. That makes her not the best choice of agent one can make. But, at least, she realizes how she uses language.

bryan @ 213

Goes with the dinosaurs.

Joel Polowin @115: Aha, metric multi-fold returns! Seems I'm very behind the times.

Marilee @143: Those were the only two types of stroke my faltering memory could produce. I knew there were more...probably should have Googled for the others.

I'm a little stunned to find out that Lanaia was paying a ghost-writer $400 a month for TWO YEARS to produce this incoherent tome!?!

If we could find this Mr. Hill, he would be a hurting puppy

Mr. Hill is hurting puppies?
It's worse than I imagined.

Very late to the party, but...

I think Lanaia is worthy of pity --taking at her word,caveat here-- in that she is someone who is so desperate to see herself in print that she will believe all kinds of swill in spite of common sense. I can just see some grifter with a prune for a heart telling her that someone would take her "ideas" and write them up "properly".

On the other hand, Cheryl...oy gevalt. The gift that keeps on giving.

Jen Birren @ 186: It is possible to plagiarise your own work; a PhD is supposed to be an original bit of research, so if you don't bother do do any more research and fill it up with what you've done for your Masters, that's plagiarism.

Indeed. As another example, this one from underneath my nonfiction freelancer hat, I sometimes end up on projects that are very similar to previous projects for the same editor. I am encouraged to reused the research where appropriate, but I am strictly forbidden to copy-paste from the previous manuscript, even though a rewritten section would convey the exact same information.

Alan Braggins @189: I think you do mean Antz, the other one was A Bug's Life and didn't have a noticable soldier caste.

That's right, I remember now. A Bug's Life was the one with the traveling circus and the grasshopper baddies. Antz was the one where Woody Allen wants to marry the ant princess and ends up saving the colony from the sergeant's coup-like machinations. Yeah, it was the latter.

abi @196: You're right, though anything so completely clunky that the reader stops and realises what I didn't say will do.

I'm a fan of 19th C / early 20th C ellisions, personally: "And shouted, 'What the f---k?'" Of course, the literature I'm thinking of used the device to euphemize much softer rhetoric, like "d---n," and also to anonymize known personages, like "Mrs. T---".

Dorothy Rothschild @ #183:

while the article itself never directly states that copying his own thesis is plagiarism

The article never states that he copied his own thesis, period. What it states is that his thesis contains work that he copied from others.

they're selling this article as a) more alleged plagiarism through b) copying [his own] master's thesis.

I think you're misreading the article. They're not saying "Poshard has been accused of cribbing in his doctoral dissertation, and now we learn that one of the works he cribbed from is his own master's thesis"; what they're saying is "Poshard has been accused of cribbing in his doctoral dissertation, and now we learn that he is accused of cribbing in his master's thesis as well".

Cheryl,

Just FYI, everyone would be much more likely to accept an apology were the offending excerpt actually REMOVED from the author's web site. There is no excuse for that to still be on the Internet, credited to Lanaia Lee. NONE.

Her web page has not been updated to apologize to anybody for what has happened, nor to say that the book's release will be delayed. Your web site has not been updated either.

You have both had more than 24 hours to make these changes. That you have not says more than any non-apology.

Suzanne, #167: from that article: Police are investigating whether the bogus note was among a batch distributed last year as a publicity stunt by a Dallas-based religious ministry.

*headdesk* What is it about Texas, anyhow?

Re the rest of your comment, I might have a little sympathy for Lainia in direct proportion to the amount of cognitive brain damage she may have suffered from her stroke. It's no more fair to expect someone with genuine brain damage to function at a normal intellectual level than it is to expect someone with severe arthritis to function at a normal physical level.

OTOH, if all the talk about the stroke is just a bid for sympathy, all bets are off.

Dave, #179: You sound rather like the probably-apocryphal .sig one of my friends uses:
The Earth is degenerating these days. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer mind their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.
--Assyrian Stone Tablet, c.2800 BCE

Plagiarist's Agent, #198: Nor have we seen any apologies for the nasty name-calling and threats on YOUR part, let alone any acknowledgement that the people at Dear Author (and elsewhere) have not done anything wrong by exposing this nasty situation. Don't whine that you don't know what else you can do; no one is going to believe you.

There's no way you can make yourself be in the right about ANY of this clusterfuck. The only possible approach remaining is for you to own responsibility for your own screwups (i.e. the threats, name-calling, and fraudulent representation), which you seem singularly unwilling to do.

ajay @#180: In one of the Dream Park sequels, the game du liber had a rule that using someone else's magic was Bad News; the rule was the basis for a trap in the endgame.

Your idea does seem pretty interesting, though -- perhaps some of the pirates could turn out to be privateers, bringing various governments into the the mess. You could hyave sea hags drowning victims in tangles of irrelevancy, manuscript sails driven by gusts of bloviation, flagships off-course because they lost their rud//eaders, ghost writers hiding in weighted mirrors... okay, okay, I'll stop now!

More seriously, and sadly, I'd bet lunch money that a doctor would take 15 minutes with "Lanaia" before noting "drastically impaired judgement".

Just as an observation here -- an agent is running a business. Part of being a successful business owner is PR and selling one's product -- in this case, novels.

Cheryl, do you know who the people here are? The hosts? The people posting? The people who very likely lurk here? The friends they have? Do you understand how the publishing industry works and that people *talk* to each other?

Storming in, threatening the hosts of this blog with witchcraft and a lawsuit because they exposed a fraud that *you* should have detected *as the agent* before the book ever was printed ... and then demanding an apology? Because they became aware of plagariasm? And passed it on?

Dude.

This is classic. Do you *know* how bad it looks?

I'm small fry in the industry. I'm microscopic. Heck, I'm not even "small fry" -- I'm not even hatched yet. And *I* know that when you get caught in the wrong you don't threaten to sue TNH and Jim because they pointed out that you and your client were in the wrong. You gracefully apologize, fix the problem immediately, and then rant, rave, and break some dishes in private.

Me? Myself? If I screw up publically? I fix the problem then tell it to my dog. And apologize. Fixing comes first, apology second, dog third. (And venting to the dog is much better for your mental health than blaming the dog.)

Threatening to sue our esteemed hosts here (or hex them, or whatever) is just simply a bad business move. And you're trying to run a business.

Unless you're aspiring to run a scam. You're not trying to run a scam, are you?

@95: "[sic-by-parallel]"

But I thought that every malformed sentence was malformed in its own way?
(Tolstoy-by-parallel)

227: I am so stealing these ideas. Ghost writers, especially. Also manuscript sails.

Dammit, now I have two magical publishing stories going at once. One is present day and mostly set on land, in a publishing house dealing with obstreperous agents and a plagiarism case; the other is 19th century and mostly set at sea, with a really nasty version of the famous New York dockside scene where thousands of people gather to find out if Little Nell yet lives. (Short answer: in a sense, yes.)

ajay, wouldja hurry up and write them? I want to read them both!

Re 188, 198:

Ms. Pillsbury, you may think that you have made the form of an apology, but the substance of your comment is accusation levened with threats frosted with bad grammar. You can fill a bundt pan with plaster and packing peanuts, and paint the result with chocolate colored epoxy, but the substance will not be yummy yummy cake.

ajay @ 230... find out if Little Nell yet lives

Will Dudley Dooright save her from the evil clutches of Snidely Whiplash?

ajay (at 230) -- I want to read these, too!

I remember back in 1994 reading Lion of Macedon in paperback. It had the first two chapters of Dark Prince as a teaser in the back. In that context, that first chapter seemed to be Gemmel saying "I see your* Lion of Macedon and raise you a demonically posessed Alexander the Great". I couldn't afford the hardback** (at Uni at the time). Would you believe that this chapter is burned into my brain? I'm not the only person Gemmel did this too either.

At least no one has tried to make the defence that Gemmel himself was recycling Greek History and Mythology for this particular novel; that stuff is all out of copyright, he acknowledged where it came from in the bibliography and he had the decency to use his own words†.

* Or rather his, but then this phrase looks even odder
** If there was one; I eventually borrowed the trade paperback from Ray across the hall. My copy of Lion of Macedon still has the Music and Video Exchange sticker on it, so it looks like I had to buy it second hand.
† And his own story. It may have been about this time that I began to collect fictional Alexanders; it's an odd hobby‡, but I like it. Do I need to make it clear that I'm just barely semi-serious about the "decency to use his own words" bit?
‡ Not as odd as collection fictional Boudicas which I started about the same time.

"to find out if Little Nell yet lives. (Short answer: in a sense, yes.)"

Can you call it living when one so young is left bereft of all morality!? A common trollop in the sinful city of New Orleans!

My gentle company, now I can reveal to you the awful truth; little Nell, our Nell that was once so pure, was last seen in the company of a young scion of a plantation family by name Louis de Pointe du Lac, and his friend, a depraved and bloodthirsty Frenchman.
I hereby calumniate as abominable these two despoilers of innocence that she calls her 'daddies'!

Just to state something clearly that I don't believe has been previously mentioned:

It doesn't matter if some of the book was actually ghostwritten by Chris Hill. As long as Lainia is being represented as the original author of work which is not hers, it's plagiarism. (Wasn't there a link recently to a website offering custom-written term papers for sale? Same thing.)

The correct form of attribution for a ghostwritten book is "by [Author] with [Ghostwriter]". If William Shatner can get it right, there's no excuse for anyone else not to do so. Merely removing/rewriting the sections plagiarized from Gemmell will not make it legitimate to publish this book with Lainia credited as the sole author.

Whooee! This has been an intereting and jam-packed thrill ride!

(Oooh - jam!)

(BTW - the pickles are on the second shelf, on the right. Please leave at least one for me.)

In almost 25 years in the Criminal Justice System (as a court clerk and legal clerk), I've rarely seen a case so fraught with lies, deception, advantage-taking, double dealing and outright flummery.

Some of the things said by the accused are of the sort that used to have my judge take a 5 minute recess so he and I could step back into the hallway and fall down laughing from the sheer effrontery, brazenness and brainlessness of the defendants/litigants.

But it is pathetic that anyone whose apparent mental and emotional age is 13 (from things said, and the way in which they have been said I am approximating) can actually make a living in a service industry, or in a field in which one makes a living by getting people to trust you. It's a sad world where such folk can actually do well for themselves from the disabled, the immature, and the fecklessly naive, and get away with it.

I look forward to seeing what becomes of this incredible cluster-hug.

BTW - #210 - Bryan: Are you by any chance referring to the baby-eating Bishop of Bath & Wells?

Ajay #230: I want to read those too!

#32 ::: Cheryl Pillsbury ::: (view all by) ::: October 11, 2007, 05:11 PM:

My name is Cheryl Pillsbury, published in my own right, I'm also the founder of AG Press which did the work on the book, 'Of Atlantis.' Come to find out from a deep search into this issue, we discovered a former literary agent she worked with on this book gave her advice on how to write the prologue. Come to find out, it is simular to his book. We didn't know this, we don't know him and never did until today. We do apologise for this, we are planning to do a re-write and remedey this issue.

For people who throw stones at glasses houses should be very cautious about speaking before they know the truth. Slander can cause a major lawsuit from the author and the publisher mentioned, because I will make sure they know about this and dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca.

I was just informed, the author has already set the motions for the lawsuit, be prepared. You were told by the lawyer not to post anything related to this issue, first amendement does not apply. I have made a copy of this site for proof, see you soon. Have a ducky day.
=======================

I have tattled on you at witchwars2.

Now on to the rest.

Thank you so very much for making Pagans to look even more idiotic then they are already made out to be.

It's not 10 fold, it's 3 fold and it applies to YOUR MAGICKAL WORKINGS AND YOUR LIFE. Try reading www.wiccaweb under why wiccans suck, and you should get a decent history. The three fold law comes into being as a karmic reprocussion when your teh stupid(I'm summarising it's more complex). Try reading the entire Wiccan Rede and not just the 8 lines. And try reading some more the llwelyn for a change.

If you are planning to do a spell to put retribution 10 fold on anyone, I'd seriously think hard about it. It's not like MAAT has better things to do with her time then listen to your petty grievances and you may not like being told to grow the heck up. Heck judges these days hate trival lawsuits, can you imagine what the Gods of Justice feel?!

Shakes head.

Really everyone, not All Wiccans or Pagans are this well(fill in the blank)

Damn. Look at what I missed, thanks to the day job and going to hear Charlie Stross last night...

OTOH, I got the full force of the entertainment this morning...and I've gotta say, my remedial writing class writes better than the two major protagonists in this little debacle....

Cheryl @ 198 IF you pulled the book why is the information unchanged on the web site? As I left on the message board yesterday(which got deleted); Take it down! It is an atrocity and is not helping your side by leaving it up.

If you can take the time time to miss-represent Wiccans and your poor clients and throw around threats of internet lawsuits then you can take twenty min to pull mention of the book off of your site and your client's site and put a real apology up.

Everyone else; I have lost a day of writing thanks to you. My sides ache from giggling so hard. Thanks. =D

Dear Ms Pillsbury

As a David Gemmell reader, I'd like to say that your apology on making light is appreciated, however, it would have been much more welcomed if you had actually mentioned what the apology related to and to whom the apology was aimed at.

I am also perplexed as to why the excerpt of 'Lanaia's' 'Of Atlantis' has not been removed from the internet, and a formal apology put in its place. Surely in the light of all the bad comments and press that is still ongoing, would it not be best to have it taken down from alongstoryshort.net ?

I hope that the situation is resolved smoothly and without much more distress to all involved.

Is it wrong that these threads/train wrecks always make me feel so much better about myself?

"BTW - #210 - Bryan: Are you by any chance referring to the baby-eating Bishop of Bath & Wells?"

No. The first post of mine in this thread should give a clue to the 'sources' of material for the subsequent posts (and a common thread linking most of these sources) up until the Little Nell post.

ajay@230: "I am so stealing these ideas."

That does seem appropriate.

Is this another truth nugget from #78?

"Roval Publishing is a sef-publishing company that specializes in digital"

I'm thinking digital in the "finger" sense, rubber glove optional, extra fee for Vaseline.

#226 Lee: Re the rest of your comment, I might have a little sympathy for Lainia in direct proportion to the amount of cognitive brain damage she may have suffered from her stroke. It's no more fair to expect someone with genuine brain damage to function at a normal intellectual level than it is to expect someone with severe arthritis to function at a normal physical level. OTOH, if all the talk about the stroke is just a bid for sympathy, all bets are off.

Yeah, I thought about that a lot when I was writing my earlier comment. I guess there's so much dishonesty here that I find it hard not to have at least some reasonable doubt about the stroke story. After all, the author has managed to come here and post at least as coherently as her "agent", which suggests to me that she has to have at least enough presence of mind to recognize that the novel she was putting into print as her "gift" to the world was not her own work at all. Just as the man in Texas (even if he believed the $1,000,000 bill was real) must have known he hadn't really earned it, I'd be hard-pressed to be convinced that she wasn't at least somewhat aware that she was engaged in a cheat of some sort, whether or not she grasped the extent of it or the extent to which she was the victim.

I do feel bad for her, just not very much.

One thing I'm confused about is Hill. Was his scam being worked worldwide or just in Britain?
If just in Britain, then how did he hook Lanana/Mary? To me he seems like a red herring, who Cheryl and Mary are using in a bid to divert the outrage.

Christopher Hill was before Cheryl, widely known now for his shane, just check out Writers Beware, he's listed there, I was scammed with bogus contracts with reputable publishing houses like Viking and Gryphon. I even have the e-mails from him breaking down his meeting with these guys.
Lanaia

#250 Lanaia: I notice that you still have the stolen work posted at alongstoryshort under your own name.

What's up with that?

thom @249
One thing I'm confused about is Hill. Was his scam being worked worldwide or just in Britain?
If just in Britain, then how did he hook Lanana/Mary? To me he seems like a red herring, who Cheryl and Mary are using in a bid to divert the outrage.

Hill probably hooked them through the same medium that allows me to read a New York based blog from my home office just north of Amsterdam. Teh Intarweebs are everywhere.

Victoria Strauss' link in comment 109 mentions that Lanaia was in contact with her about Hill before this story hit the webs. She also sounds like she has seen evidence which backs up the narrative we're being given here.

Without getting too far into the rest of the situation (vanity presses and agents that must be paid up front, both signs of Cargo Cult publishing*), I'd say the story of the source of the prologue is at least highly plausible.

-----
* That's the mindset that says if you have an Agent and Books On Your Shelf, you are as much a published author as Dan Brown. Never mind that DB makes a living doing it, while you have spend a lot of money getting to this place**. Yog's Law and all that.

** Not that there is anything wrong with being a hobby author, IMHO, if you're honest about the fact that that's what you're doing (and, it is to be hoped, enjoying the time you spend on it). I'm a hobby bookbinder; I spend my money and my time on my craft, but I don't pretend I'm Sir Bernard Middleton or Geert Van Daal.

Oh my GOD you guys:

Mary "Lanaia Lee" Kellis just got written up today in her local paper promoting "On Atlantis".

Not mentioning it was ghostwritten, instead playing up her disabilities and claiming it was all her own work.

Cheryl claimed to have read the book SIX TIMES.

"
“Of Atlantis” is based on a short story called “Identity,” which Mary wrote four years ago under the pen name Lanaia Lee. Lanaia comes from a character on the “Stargate” science fiction series and Lee is her mother’s maiden name."

Lanaia #250, my sympathies. But you are *perpetuating the scam*. You may have emails detailing Hill's meetings with Viking, but it should be obvious by now that they are not true. It is also beyond obvious that the excerpt which is STILL up on your website with your name on it does not belong to you, whatever the fake "Viking" emails have to say.

You might well have been scammed but you've shot yourself in the foot here, badly, and the only way out is to do several hard things.

1) Sever all ties with Cheryl, immediately, and distance yourself from her in public. Your website will be one appropriate place to do this.

2) Take down that excerpt, and post a REAL apology in its place. You can say you've been scammed. You can say whatever you like. Just say you're sorry, and hopefully that you won't do it again.

3) Scrap this particular project, which is tainted beyond recovery, and start writing something else if writing is truly the "gift you want to share with the world". You may have to be content with sharing it on the Internet. You may go with an outfit like Lulu,com, if you're that desperate for a book-shaped object with your name on it. But it will have to be a different book. The sooner you come to grips with that, the sooner you can start working on it. If you want to, that is.

Writing is hard work. Probably harder than you ever thought it would be. The only way out and up is THROUGH. You have to do the work, and pay the dues.

One last thing. I can appreciate a stroke can take away your ability to physically write - I am married to a stroke survivor, and since his stroke, four-and-change years ago, he is still not able to use his right hand to type with. However, it has not stopped him from writing - he uses voice recognition software, and dictates his stuff into the computer. Failing that, you can hire (for far less money than you paid Christopher Hill) someone to whom you can dictate your story and then that person can type it into the computer. But once again - you have to WANT to write, and you have to do your own writing. There is simply no way around that. The stroke might have been traumatic, even tragic, but you're playing it here as the pity card so that people will feel sorry for you and stop harping on you and just accept whatever "writing" you might have to offer. But even with the stroke taken into the equation, you've damaged your own credibility here, and it's taking further hits every day, every hour, every minute that excerpt is up on your website with your name attached to it.

There you go. Take the thing down. Apologise. Tell Cheryl she no longer speaks for you.

Then start again, fresh. Sadder, but wiser. It's the only way out of the hole.

Explain to me why someone uses a pen name but always mentions her real name in the next breath.

Kinda ruins the point of a pen name, it seems to me.

Alma @ 254: according to the Burlington Times article, the stroke damaged vocal cords but not motor function. So dictation is out but she probably doesn't have trouble typing.

Ajay @#230: Hey, you can't steal those... I just gave them to you! ;-)

Seriously, if I ever write anything it's likely to be in a totally different sub-genre, a punnishing story like that would have me drowning in cognitive spaghetti. Go for it!

On the subject of publishing, altho' the themes sound rather familiar, I was wondering if people here would be interested in looking at and discussing the ideas in this story I ran across at Yahoo!? It goes into detail beyond the two bits I've extracted.
Lean years for the British novel, publishers say

FRANKFURT (AFP) - The British are savouring Doris Lessing's Nobel Literature Prize but publishers at the world's biggest book fair said on Friday the nation had forsaken good novels for mysteries and gory thrillers. … In recent years, they have witnessed a rush for thick, densely-plotted novels that make for a gratifying but effortless read. …

The publishers say the hard times do not scare off would-be authors. "Microsoft is the bane of our lives," Legrand said, adding that a manuscript must be truly good for a publisher to read past page three.
Shelly said only one percent of the stories sent to publishers around the world, would eventually become books. "We are looking for good story-telling. It is very rare."

Meanwhile, I keep seeing Roval as Royal with the tail of the y cut off. Annoying to the eye.

"Little Nell?" Hmmm.
Could there be a longer and darker story behind this picture than we've suspected? (Item 270170938819)

Have you guys seen this?

Mary discovered Roval Publishing Company through her friend Cheryl Pillsbury of Pepperell, Mass. Mary wrote poems to accompany some of Pillsbury’s writings.

“To me, it’s amazing that she can take history and weave fantasy into it,” Pillsbury said in a recent phone interview. “I’m a fan. I’ve read the book six times already.”

“Of Atlantis” is based on a short story called “Identity,” which Mary wrote four years ago under the pen name Lanaia Lee. Lanaia comes from a character on the “Stargate” science fiction series and Lee is her mother’s maiden name.

Uh yeah.

Seven posts previous to yours. ;)

Serge, #233, I don't know a lot about Dudley, but I'm pretty sure Little Nell comes from Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Suzanne, #248, the picture of her and hubby, next to the bit where it says they both use wheelchairs, shows that neither of them are in wheelchairs. Of course, not all people who use wheelchairs use them all the time. If I could get a scrip for one, I'd be going to museums and fall festivals and such again, but I wouldn't use it for grocery shopping. (The doctors don't consider museums and fall festivals and such as essential, while at the same time they tell me that online conversation is not adequate socialization.)

shadowsong, #256, if she doesn't have problems with motor function, why does she use a wheelchair or walker? Most people with paralyzed vocal cords can whisper. Mine are partially-paralyzed (not related to the strokes) and if I talk for very long, my voice becomes odd. I can't sing anymore, though. I can see the trach scar in that picture. She's quoted as speaking mostly grammatically, which means either she's pretending here, or the article writer cleaned it up.

@shawn struck

oops. sorry, shawn. got all eager and stuff. had to share. :D

Marilee @ 262... The little Nell originally refered to in this thread was from a Dickens novel. Can't remember the title. As for the Nell I brought up, she sort-of was the girlfriend of Dudley Dooright. Sort-of, because she apparently was more interested in his horse (who was called Horse) than in his Brian-Mulroney chin.

Epacris, #258: I must confess to some confusion. How exactly is "a thick, densely-plotted novel" equated with "an effortless read"? Those two terms would appear, on the surface, to signify opposing things.

The Peshawar Lancers (just to pick a recently-read example) certainly qualifies as both thick and densely-plotted. It takes a certain amount of concentration to keep up with everything that's going on, and the descriptive prose itself is densely woven; if I got too tired, I found my eyes skating over the pages. I certainly wouldn't describe my experience of reading it as "effortless"; but if I want effortless, I read frothy Regency romances! And it also definitely made me think about a lot of things, which IMO is one of the marks of a really outstanding story.

Perhaps they're saying that reading a "good novel" should be work rather than pleasure. If that's the case, I couldn't disagree more. A book one has to work* to read is a poorly-written book.

* "Work" in this context includes the tag [+unpleasant]. Working at something you enjoy is fun, but it doesn't sound as if they're talking about that.

#262 Marilee: I guess what I was trying to say was less that I doubted that she'd actually had a stroke so much as I doubted that whatever stroke(s) she'd had were sufficient to count as any real defense/explanation for the sort of ethical impairment on display here. And yeah, while Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Hill are obviously the greater cretins, everything that has happened here (as we understand things so far) directly stemmed from her willingness to pass off work that she knew was not her own.

Yeah, Cheryl, that apology was lame.

I mean, I agree with whoever said you need to own up to the mistake, and do it graciously.

There should be NO evidence of that passage on the website, an apololgy to David's family and brief explanation should be in it's place. You apologize profusely and explain how you made a grevious error and will use this as a learning experience and how you hope it will make you a stronger person and a better writer. (see, I went and did all the hard work, where's MY $400??)

I would also consider writing a formal apology to the newspaper who did the original interview, pehaps offering to explain your side of the story, before they get a hold of it and do a nasty expose piece. You made them look foolish, and they won't forget it.

What you don't do is threaten people. Jane is welcome to post what she likes in this case, you have no basis for suit, especially since what she posted was the truth.

There are right ways to do this, and wrong ways, and guess which road you took?

Just my bit of advice for you. Free of charge.

Lee @ 265... Stirling never wrote another Peshawar, did he? I had to really suspend my disbelief about the central premise, but hey, that didn't keep me from enjoying the book.

I know I'm awfully late to the party, but I think I've worked out the tenfold rule thing.

When you treble the back-at-you-by-three karma hit, it acts like a bakers dozen and you get an extra one. Only with totally different numbers, of course. And no dozen, to speak of.

Now, for the believers, and I'm not of the religion so I really don't know what's at stake here, what exactly is Jane being threatened with getting back three or ten times? She's exposed a pretty nasty piece of work in Ms Cheryl, so if she's ever as nasty a piece of work herself, she'll get thrice (or ten times) as exposed? How does the karmic payback work?

Suzanne: A stroke can cause all sorts of changes to mental function. While that can include loss of ethical constraints, it's probably more common to see general deficits in judgement -- besides ethical judgements, that can include reality-testing, "people-reading", evaluating social contexts, distinguishing truth from fantasy, and even the ability to "learn from experience". I'd say some combination of those would explain most of what we've seen from her, and some of what we've heard about in this saga.

People with such impairments are easy game for con-artists of all sorts, and if that's her situation, then this really is a tragic abuse, of someone who's legally and morally non compos mentis. Unfortunately, we may not find out for sure until a court considers her case....

PS: I love the ML "page not found" message!

Epacris #258: So they're saying there's no good British literature anymore, just that filthy genre stuff? How terrible.

Also, do they give any examples of these thick, densely-plotted British gorefests? They sound good.

I'm inclined to agree with Scraps that the apology is not owed to us, but to the Gemmell estate and to Jane Little. One could argue that Cheryl Pilsbury should apologize for the threatened curses and legal action; but since we tend to regard those as a variety of snack food, I don't see much point to it.

Mary Kellis/Lanaia Lee has been engaging in vanity and self-deception, with what looks like a lot of help from Cheryl Pillsbury. She's still unclear on the concept of plagiarism, and it was wrong of her to let that news story go into print when she knew the book's status was so questionable. On the other hand, she has been imposed on, and it's pretty evident that she's not the sharpest hammer in the bag.

Cheryl Pillsbury, though, appears to be a natural-born bottom feeder. Mary Kellis considers Cheryl her friend. Cheryl's been published once each by Xlibris and Outskirts, and twice by PublishAmerica. This shows staggeringly bad judgement, but never mind. For now, the point is that there's no way Cheryl doesn't know how fruitless it is to publish your work with such outfits.

Nevertheless, she's charged Mary for the privilege of having her book placed with another such vanity publisher. Roval uses the same come-on line as all the other scammers. It's right there in that news story:

“The book should be available in Barnes & Noble stores around the country by February of next year,” Adams added.

Also: Cheryl claims to be a fan of the book. She says she's read it six times. How is it that she never spotted the error in the first chapter where David Gemmell's "Alexander" wasn't changed to "Archimedes"? Granted, Cheryl's own prose is awful; but that's an obtrusive, sore-thumb error. How do you miss it six times running?

For that matter, how do you miss the speed-bump discontinuity where David Gemmell's prose was grafted onto Christopher Hill's? Is Cheryl, who has set herself up as a literary agent, unable to tell the difference between the two writers? Or is she fibbing when she claims to be a big fan of Mary Kellis's book?

FWIW, I think of "Little Nell" as being from Dickens (The Old Curiosity Shop, probably, though it's been almost 70 years since I read it), and "Little Eva" from Uncle Tom's Cabin. And then there's Eskimo Nell, though I don't think of her as being little.

Thick, densely plotted, yet easy to read: Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code. They may also be taking a swipe at Harry Potter. I don't think they mean Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

I am remiss. I have neglected to say that Fragano's villanelle and Abi's duck poem are wonderful.

Vian: I'm not actually practicing Wicca anymore, but I'll take a stab:

The basic point here is that the "tenfold" threat made no more sense than anything else in her letters.

The way it's supposed to work is a little like dharma, but more direct: whatever actions you take towards other people will also affect what happens to you. That applies to life in general, but the use of magic in particular emphasizes the effect, and hostile or unethical use of magic ("curses" and the like) especially tends to lash back on the caster in disastrous ways.

Now, different traditions interpret this somewhat differently -- some consider the threefold rule to apply to any actions affecting others, whether magical or not. Some groups consider it applicable specifically to magical actions, or specifically to hostile actions. Some consider is specific to failed spells, where the magic is frustrated or "broken", and thus comes back in a chaotic form. Pretty much all of them would consider that the worst case is a failed curse, and worst of all, one where you don't even have support from "the gods" (roughly, moral standing).

It's also considered unwise to go around magically attacking random people, for much the same reason that (sane) martial artists don't go around picking fights -- sooner or later, you run into somebody who can kick your ass or worse. In magic, this is complicated by the idea that even "normal", non-magical people have natural defenses (think of a hedgehog). Some people also have a fair bit of "natural power"... especially leaders of groups, and people who are widely admired respected, and/or revered.

In this case, AFAIK, Jane had not in fact attacked or persecuted Cheryl directly -- the only "harm" she'd done was to expose Cheryl's own dishonest and exploitative acts. The only possible basis for her claim of any-fold effects would be something like "your actions hurt me, so I get to hurt you worse". But that's not how Wiccan morality works. Indeed, vindictiveness, even for real harm, is usually considered hazardous to your psychic health, even before your curses start bouncing! The whole point of Threefold Return is, "let the Goddess take care of it".

In this case, Cheryl has basically swept the boards for "dumbass use of magic" -- unfounded retaliation, poor moral standing, ignorance of ritual rules (and not just the three vs. ten bit), attacking a "hard target", and above all hubris (always a killer). There may be other issues, but I can't be bothered to tease them out.

Does that help?

I don't think I've ever felt so... so... dirty... at an online forum. Kind of makes me miss my plecostomus. At least that bottom feeder actually cleaned the tank. I feel the urge to wash my hands or take a shower or something. Very strange.

Oh, and just to retrieve the specific point of your question (sorry about that), the original threat was "tenfold nightmares". That's considered a pretty typical magical attack and/or rebound from same.

#253 Shawn Struck:

That news article is dated August 12, 2007, not today.

And I remain amused by the entire business. I can't help but wonder if Mary and Cheryl think that David Gemmell paid someone to write and publish his books too.

Or if they actually understand what plagiarism is. Hint: if you didn't write the words, and you take credit for them, that's plagiarism. Even if you don't get paid for it.

There's a fair track through Google from Mary/Lanaia's participation in other forums that appears to confirm her history of disability, as well as previous authorship of various poems and other short pieces.

WRT some of the previous posts here about the proper way to credit a ghostwriter, I rather thought it was traditional *not* to credit a ghostwriter (hence the "ghost"), or perhaps at most to discreetly place their name on the copyright page. If their credit is more conspicuous, then surely they're automatically elevated to "co-author", even if the contribution of the better known "author" was limited to writing the name on a contract?

I must confess that I haven't checked the copyright pages of the ton of books whose covers credit them to VC Andrews, who has been far more prolific in death than she was in life; otoh this may be fudged somewhat by the current use of "VC Andrews" as a trademark rather than a name per se.

...though I, too, am boggled by the concept of vanity-publishing a ghostwritten manuscript as the path to Real Authorship.

Has anyone else seen the bit about hailing herself as the second coming of Edgar Allen Poe?

"Dark Gothic Poetry by the Edgar Allen Poe of the modern age!"

This is exactly like the plagiarism dramas I've seen happen over the years in various fandoms, including the milking of personal tragedies as excuse for theft and lies, assertions of murderous intent upon the part of the exposers, and the appearance of cohorts-not-sockpuppets rushing to the defense. I wonder what exactly the behind-the-scenes scenes for Ben Domenech, Mike Barnicle, Jayson Blair et al were like for melodrama?

beth meacham #280:

Hint: if you didn't write the words, and you take credit for them, that's plagiarism. Even if you don't get paid for it.

Or even if you paid for it.

The VC Andrews books are now written by Andrew Neiderman. I find it odd and vaguely inappropriate that they're written by a man.

Unfortunately, I can't find my favorite ghostwriting quote right now. When Pamela Anderson's novel was about to come out, I read an interview with her where she basically said, "Yeah, I decided I wanted to write a book, but I didn't know anything about writing, so I hired this guy to help me with, you know, the basics: grammar, sentence structure, what should happen next..." She was pretty up-front, in a hilarious way, about the fact that she didn't actually write the book.

Teresa, #272: At this point, it's very likely that Mary considers Cheryl her only friend, the one person who's stuck by her since the shit hit the fan. The fact that this is only true because Cheryl is in it hip-deep herself (and therefore has to keep up the pretense) isn't going to occur to her. And it's one more black mark against Cheryl. I don't even want to think about the amount of karmic retribution that woman is accumulating.

I note with bemusement that in the Burlington Times article Mary and her husband "live independently with their fateful [sic] companion; a 7-year-old Jack Russell Terrier named Jack."

I dunno. This whole flap has inspired a couple of lovely bits of poetry, and some primo flights of fancy. That's got to put a couple of karma points in someone's pocket.

Thanks Dave - I mean, if she'd threatened excummunication or something at least we'd understand what Big Stick was being waved about here.

And nightmares? Look, I hate the bloody things. Really. An interrupted night's sleep made worse by my own wierd little psyche is a complete annoyance, and can occasionally make the next day a bit of an uphill climb. Mind you I don't have them above twice a year, and food and wine to excess seem to be related to the experience.

But it strikes me as a wierd thing to threaten someone with - I mean, your nightmares come from within your own head. Karmically, I could see the value in a warning along the lines of "this will hurt you a lot more than it hurts the person you are trying to harm (it'll metaphorically or literally come back to you thrice)" - you do evil things, you're going to become an evil person, and at the end of the day, there you'll be with all the terrible, morally bereft things you've done.[1] But is Cheryl trying to claim she'll make Jane have nightmares? Curse her with them, visit them upon her? And not expecting to be laughed at?

Because if I were the type to make threats, and I'm not, as a rule, although occasionally I give warnings, I'd at least stick to things I had an outside chance of controlling.

[1]You know - like if you fleece a person with a disability and act like you've actually done them some sort of favour when all you're really done is point her towards a vanity press and ... oh never mind ...

So has anybody actually written to the Burlington Times exposing this?

Has it been sent to Locus?

Jane

#288: Has it been sent to Locus?

I have no idea, but Ansible has been taking notes....

I take a break from horse wrangling and miss all the excitement.

Perhaps the missing pieces of this plagarism case are the monkeys. Hill subcontracted to 1,000 monkeys that banged furiously against their keyboards. Unbeknownst to the monkeys their keyboards had been switched from QWERTY to DVORAK --- and thus we ended up with Gemmel as opposed to Shakespeare.

#288: So has anybody actually written to the Burlington Times exposing this?

I sent an email to the author. No response yet.
I also sent one to the owner of the Long Story Short page, was duly thanked for the information, and yet the plagiarized exerpt is still up on the page a day later. Go figure. So much for being a busybody nosy parker.

I never threatened anyone directly, I don't practice witchcraft, I'm not qualified. Ms. Lee is a victim of this issue and it will be resolved. If I knew who Mr. Gemmell was and had read his books, I would have noticed it and we wouldn't be here now. If I could apologize to them directly I would, but I don't have their address or number. I'm truly sorry this took place, we never meant to harm anyone and we are solving the issue.

This thread misses Xopher, like a soup misses an essential herb.

When is he back? Will the piñata still have any sweets when he is?

Langford, you sly dog, we knew we could count on you!

Jane

You could have Lanaia post a public apology on her website. I think that would do.

And if you're 'not qualified', why did you even say it??? Just wondering.

Because I'm re-learning Wicca, so I don't qualify to threaten or anything else, yet. I believe she has, if not I will ask her to do so.

"I'm sorry this took place."

Not "I'm sorry for the things I did and said."..?

Want to try again?

You certainly have a lot to re-learn, if you think threatening plays *any* part in Wicca.

To Ethan, up there at #284:

Just last night I heard Katie Price, AKA Jordan (glamour model and TV face) declare on the Jonathan Ross show (I'm in the UK, if you haven't all ready guessed) that she "wrote" her own books although she "didn't do any of that typing and stuff". Quite what input she did have was not made clear: but she looks very nice in the author photographs, I'm sure.

This whole thread has been a joy. It's covered every sort of writing scam I can think of; has taken in a bit of legal wrangling and occult-dabbling on the way (and I say that without intending to be disrespectful to the Real Wiccans here, which I recognise as being separate to the Wiccas, a whole new category now open before me); and has even managed a brief discussion of literature from Dickens to Dan Brown.

I just wonder where Hill is, what else he's up to: and how many more of his ghost-written gems are out there, waiting to explode.

Cheryl, were you (as Lanaia's agent) the person who found Hill and put Lanaia in contact with him?

Jumping in on the tangent:

publishers at the world's biggest book fair said on Friday the nation had forsaken good novels for mysteries and gory thrillers.

Well, isn't that just adorable.

I write psychological mystery - my first book came out earlier this year. I do my level best to write books that are not only good mysteries but damn good novels. A pretty decent number of readers and reviewers seem to think I'm succeeding.

If only someone had told me, before I went to all this trouble, that there's no such thing as a good novel about a mystery - the two are mutually exclusive.

You'll have to excuse me while I go wash off some of the stupid.

Cheryl @292:

I may be a little slow on the uptake here, but could you remind me again exactly how "...dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca." might not be construed as a threat?

If I knew who Mr. Gemmell was

I think it best to explain this in short, simple words. David Gemmell was a very famous and successful fantasy and historical author. His books were, and still are, published by Transworld and Del Ray, both part of Random House, an extremely big publisher. Big publishers often get very upset when other people copy and reproduce books that they have paid for the right to publish.

If I could apologize to them directly I would

Well, Random House's address is on its website. However, its lawyers may well be contacting you anyway to discuss an apology, although they might expect you to go a little further than just saying that you are sorry.

If you are not seeking advice from a lawyer who specialises in intellectual property law, it would be a very, very good idea for you to do so right now.

"...gory thrillers."

I read that as goy thrillers at first.

Greg London (#277): I share your general response that all of this is icky ("Unclean! Unclean!").

The Burlington Times should either publish a letter from someone here (has one been written?) or issue a correction. As for lawsuits, the uncleanness is so general that no one can claim entire innocence in this case. No genuine lawyers, then, I guess.

Nearly all threads on this site become hilarious at some point. I thank Bryan (especially in #203)for *my* biggest grins -- though "Mis-Spelled" as a title, somewhere upthread, is also lovely.

And speaking of spelling, I've had to cringe at every post from the chief protagonists. Typo Alert! very quickly went into Code Red. (Can Jim suggest a handy packet we should all have in case of that emergency? These days, white-out, a dictionary, and even automatic computer spell-checks don't seem to cut it.)

Re the post above, "(especially in #203)for" should have a space after the close-parenthesis. My apologies!

'...goy thrillers'

Bwahahaha!!! Next time someone asks me what I write, that's what I'm telling them.

I'm deeply perplexed by the fact that Ms Lee's 'agent' feels that the person who exposed the plagiarism did something vewy vewy mean to Ms Lee. She did her a BIG favour. From what I've gathered, the book was due to come out soon. If the plagiarism hadn't been caught before then, surely Ms Lee's problems could have been bigger than they are now.

#270 David: Sigh. I still don't get how she could be sufficiently damaged from a stroke to not know that she was claiming to have authored words that she clearly didn't, but I'll take your word for it that it's possible.

#291 LadyM:

The link to the newspaper article now leads to a "404 Not Found" message, so somebody paid attention.

boy o boy, I love this place.

Cheryl, you did threaten Jane, so now you're lying. "Slander can cause a major lawsuit from the author and the publisher mentioned, because I will make sure they know about this and dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca." "...Jane should apologize and pray she didn't mean the lawsuit..." You are denying your own words, which -- unfortunately for you -- are recorded on the Internet. You might want to simply shut up for a while, and think about everything you've written over the past few days, before you make any more statements that can be so easily disproved.

You are not impressing anyone. And the Gemmell text, as of five minutes ago, was still up on Lanaia's webpage, still credited to Ms. Lee. Your claims of apologies are weakened by that continued falsehood.

Vian: And nightmares? ... But it strikes me as a wierd thing to threaten someone with - I mean, your nightmares come from within your own head.

Well, that's the rationalist explanation. The practice of magic presumes the existence of psychic communication, so nightmares can easily be interpreted in terms of a psychic attack and/or hostile spirits. There's also the point that nightmares are both untestable (can't prove that someone else did or didn't have them) and suggestible. Consider that I could certainly post a passage of text here, which would inflict nightmares upon at least some of the readers! (Indeed, being mildly autistic, I had to learn not to toss that sort of thing at innocent conversationalists.) But the only proof of my "attack" would be the self-reports from upset victims.

It is possible that Cheryl's intended meaning was more like "well, this situation is a 'nightmare' for me, and Jane was the proximate cause, so she'll have an even worse experience", but even that shows a sad ignorance of moral responsibility, and its relation to the Threefold Return.

Not quite a digression: A few years ago, I realized that many "ritual constraints" on magic -- rules about "no bragging about your power", or "no talking about a spell before it bears fruit", etc., were really aspects of a single principle, which I dubbed the Zeroth Law Of Magic. The ZLoM can be summed up as "plausible deniability" -- it can never be "provable to the world at large" that the ordinary laws of nature have been violated. Like other magical (and natural) laws, this is self-enforcing -- if you try to break it, something else will give way instead. Of course, fundamentals like causality, or material permanence, are much more resilient than ephemerals such as belief, personal credibility, or even mental stability!

The big loophole in ZLoM is "shared subjective reality" -- that is, you can convince people who are sharing a "private world" with you. But if you try to extend the proof outside your "circle", (e.g. that "chi master" who tried to challenge a real martial artist) then you're SOL.

Here's what Cheryl just e-mailed me.

"I am her agent and close friend. She is a victim of this persons work, both of us never heard of him or read his books, sorry he passed away, it is a great loss. When it was brought to our attention, I immedicately investigated the situation and found the written e-mail proof this Mr. Hill, the ex-ghost writer did copy his first chaper from Dark Prince as her prologue for Of Atlantis. We have apologized many times, we have placed the book on hold until we re-write it so this will end and no one is hurt, but its too late. Before anyone could give us a chance to solve this, everyone is having a field day like kids, calling names and labeling the wrong
person, this is wrong. I have used a ghost writer with some of my work and thankfully I didn't have this happen, but unfortunately she did. We know we are innocent and will hold onto that. If everyone wishes to continue to slander, she may sue. My attorney has copies of everything and he'll decide what needs to be done. This horse issue is dead and I'm tired of repeating myself, the subject is closed, move on."

So, do you hear that? She has copies of email! And her attorney might decide to do something! And we're slandering her! And the book is on hold, what more do we want?

Also, she's written for vanity presses and used a ghostwriter too! I don't know if that's just sad, or stupid.

Vian #269: I'd parsed it as Buddhist + 2/3 Wiccan. I'd call it Bud in a can.

TNH #275: Thanks. I feel that it is only proper to credit Cheryl as the inspiration for the villanelle and to wish her all the, ahem, bliss of an eternity in the Eighth Circle.

At this hour the "golden-haired child" has not been removed from alongstoryshort.net.

Why in the foo is that excerpt still there, still listing Ms. Lee as the author?

============

Re: fee-charging agents.

1) Never pay a fee to an agent.

2) You don't need an agent of any kind to "sell" a book to a vanity press. The only agents who do "sell" books to vanity presses are fee-chargers.

3) If all the non-scammer fee-charging agents decided to go camping the back seat of his car would have lots of room for the ice chest, tent, sleeping bag, and miniature Schnauzer.

4) Ms. Lee may genuinely think that this is how publishing works. If so, it's because she was badly misguided.

"how do you miss the speed-bump discontinuity where David Gemmell's prose was grafted onto Christopher Hill's"

I wasn't aware that speed-bumps were a danger of grafts, I guess the surgeon must have been working very fast. I figured the more likely giveaway would be when she saw that Christopher Hill's prose was twice the normal size.

I've only had the time to skim most of these comments, but I have to ask even at the risk of redundancy: Am I the only one who thinks there's a very distinct possibility that Cheryl is, in fact, Christopher Hill?

Perhaps it's my overactive whatsit getting the better of me, but wouldn't it be convenient to be able to place the blame for all this upon a known scammer whose current whereabouts are unknown?

I'm tempted to go further and propose that Lanaia is also, in fact, Christopher Hill, but I can't see the upside to that particular scam.

Among Lanaia's copious publicity blurbs elseweb, there are several citations of her previously-written short story "Identity" as the seed of Of Atlantis. For the sake of textual comparison to the non-Gemmell portions of the book, here's a link to one of the various places where she'd previously posted "Identity".

In lukewarm defense of her writing style, I can think of at least one conventionally-published book that similarly substitutes a long string of synopsis for actual narrative text that contains descriptions, conversations, plot development, and other messy details that inefficiently show instead of tell. That book was written by one of my previously favorite authors as a continuation of one of my also previously fantasy series, which had been left on hiatus for several years. I bought it in hardback. Considering that the subsequent two additions to the same series haven't gotten any better, I rather wish it had been left to a clean death instead of being artificially resuscitated into a ghastly literary zombie, but I digress.

Ever remember, ye are the Hidden Children of the Gods. So never do anything to disgrace them. Never boast, Never threaten, Never say you would wish ill to anyone.

— Gerald Gardner, The Old Laws (1961), part of the Gardnerian Book of Shadows

Because I'm re-learning Wicca, so I don't qualify to threaten or anything else, yet. I believe she has, if not I will ask her to do so.

I think you just described the opposite of Wicca.

I think Mark Mitchell is really Christopher Hill.

bryan @ 303

"Monday the Rabbi Converted"?

A trivial point: in changing the name of the character from "Alexander" to "Archimedes" it rather destroys and important aspect of the work stolen from: that it was an alternate world world story about "Alexander the Great". So on top of stealing the work of another author it also vandalizes it.

Madeleine Robins @ 286:
Not to mention that I've just come back from the bookstore with copies of Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince; I've never read them, and now I'm fascinated.

Bryan @ 316:
To bring in the requisite knitting content, you most certainly can get speed-bumps if you don't pull your yarn tight enough when grafting the toe of your sock. And very uncomfortable it is, too.

Shawn @ 312 I have used a ghost writer with some of my work and thankfully I didn't have this happen, but unfortunately she did.

She used a ghost writer for self-published works?
...and charges a fee to clients?
Oh wait, she charges a fee to clients so that she can pay her ghost writer in order to get self-published!?
It all makes sense now.
Or not.

I'm finally catching up on this thread after 2 or 3 days of being under-rested and over-scheduled, and I must say it's a great way to relax, kick back, and laugh at human foibles. If don marquis or Thomas Pynchon had written about Cheryl we'd have accepted it as completely consistent with their other work. Though I think Cheryl could use some of mehitabel's joy in taking her due from the world.

Cheryl's insistence on answering comments here rather than dealing with the mess she's made is the stuff of tragic drama. "Look, Prince, I think you're letting your obsession with your mother get a little out of hand. OK, so you don't get along with your uncle. That's no reason to ignore your studies and your girlfriend. Just go make up with Laertes, and for Ghu's sake quit looking for lurkers behind the arras!" But no one wants to be Guildenstern*, everybody wants to be Hamlet, the star of the show and his father's fair-haired boy, no matter what the body count at the end of the last act.

* Or the other guy, Robin Redbreast?

Plagiarism, the drinking game

1. Vehement denial of all wrongdoing: take a sip.
2. Threatening the people who discovered/exposed the plagirism: take a sip
3. Blaming the plagiarism on stress/mental illness/physical illness/past trauma/past life trauma: take three sips.
4. Emergence of sock puppets in the guise of spouse/agent/sibling/therapist/dog groomer: take a sip.
5. Threats of internet lawyers: take a sip.
6. Appearance of internet lawyers: take a shot.
7. Appearance of internet lawyer who has no understanding of copyright law/the First Amendment/basic rules of grammar: take two shots.
8. Grudging admittance of wrongdoing and half-assed apology: take three shots.
9. Acceptance of responsibility and sincere apologies to the offended party: CHUG LIKE A FRAT BOY ON SPRING BREAK.

Joe Rybiki @317 (inter alia):

Could Cheryl Pillsbury possibly be Christopher Hill?

Victoria Strauss describes Hill's communications as:

written in dense, convoluted prose marked by repeated errors and stylistic oddities--dropped prepositions, missing apostrophes, use of commas rather than conjunctions to link phrases

In the sections she quotes, I see many distinct markers of a slightly under-educated native speaker of British English*.

Although Cheryl's prose has one of the traits (commas rather than conjunctions), her prose is not convoluted. It is also distinctly American*, though not highly refined in any sense of the word.

So either Cheryl is Christopher, and such a master/mistress of language as to fake two entirely different styles of highly vernacular prose, or they are two separate people.

Life is not a Dickens novel; we are allowed more than one seamy character feeding off of the dreams of people who aspire to literary fame.

-----
* I am a native speaker of American English, but have spent 14 years in Britain, so I can recognise many class and educational markers in both dialects.

Quick way to an interesting night, I'm tempted to read back through this with that drinking game and take them myself when any of the rules occur. I'll be in hospital come sunrise.

Scene V
Enter ghost and Cheryl
Cheryl: Where wilt thou lead me? Speak, I'll go no further.
Ghost: Mark me.
Cheryl: I will.
Ghost: My hour is almost come. When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself.
Cheryl: Alas, poor ghost!
Hill: Pity me not; but pay the bill I render first; that scales be balanced and scams advanced.
I am thy writer's spirit doom'd for a certain time to steal the light of others' inspiration. I could a tale unfold whose lightest word you'd ken to be like those oft writ by others. Thank me not, but pay it forward; that money paid to me be scammed alike.
Let not the high art of writing be a bed of widom and charity. But howsoever thou pursuest the mighty buck, taint not thy greed, nor let thy schemes contrive against the weaker. Not!
[exeunt scheming]

Lanaia Lee just isn't very bright, is she?

This interview was posted yesterday.

You'd think she'd have contacted them and asked them to, you know, hold off on it.

Highlight: LL: "Of Atlantis is going to be published by Roval Publishing, yes they are self-publishers, but I have a good reason, for two years I was scammed by a certain literary agency, being promised a publisher, two years is a long time, so I choose to self publish because I feel when the book is available it will do very well, my husband is my biggest critic and that’s what he thinks. I personally don’t like to self publish, now my book of poetry is entirely different, my publishers are a major publishing house In Portugal known as Barros Monteiro Editorial Publishers. You now it’s really strange, I have never taken any courses in creative writing, but yet I have came as far as most writer do in ten years in only four years."

So she's willing to play the "I wuz scammed!" card to explain why she's self-publishing, yet she has no problems doing interviews to publicize the book she paid the same scammer to write?

Part of me says she's just stupid, but at some point she has to take responsibility for what she's done.

::headdesk::

#331

Good Lord ... Are these people INSANE??? ...

Slyvia,
I agree! In the next couple of days, you will find an apology, and my dealings with Hill and Hill Literary Agency, and a rewrite to the prologue to Of Atlantis. I'm in a wheelchair but I can stand. Be in a wheelchair for awhile, it's not very funny.

Well, the Burlington Times article seems to be gone now - it still shows up on their search page, but try to read it and you get a 404 error. So it looks like at least one person has a scrap of good judgement.

The story-most amusing. The poetry-lovely, especially the quacking bread. But it’s Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) that made me fall off my chair laughing. Thank you for brightening my day.

Exeunt scheming, indeed.

Also, Of Atlantis is now on hold untill this problem is resolved

Lanaia: Who do you think that Sylvia is referring to by "Are these people INSANE???"

Why are you spending time posting here when the plagiarized material is still displayed on your site?

If Gemmell's agents take legal action against you because of the plagiarism, one of the factors that will be considered in court is: Since you're claiming that you're an innocent dupe, what have you done to mitigate the harm since you learned the true situation? And so far, you and your agent have attacked honest people for pointing out the plagiarism, and have not taken down the plagiarized material.

Lanaia--
If you really put Of Atlantis on hold, take it off your website. I am sorry you were victimized by a scammer, but leaving your name attached to somebody else's writing is wrong. Using a ghostwriter is one thing. Leaving your name as author of a prologue copyrighted by somebody you admit you never even heard of, is wrong. You need to take that prologue off your website. It is not yours. Even if somebody else stole it for you, it is not yours. Leaving it up is wrong.

My web mistress has the new stuff, give her time to change it

Just discovered this site, and just spent something like a half hour reading this thread. I don't know what to think.

Can I just say, though, how hysterical I find it when people pull out the lawyers when they clearly have no clue how lawyers work? The tips for plagarism were posted on Dear Author on Thursday. Even if this Mary person already had a relationship with a lawyer, she wouldn't have even gotten in to see him or her yet, never mind gotten any kind of instructions back and forth about litigation or anything else. People know you can't just cold call a lawyer and see him or her that day, unless, possibly, you're calling from jail. Don't they?

Is Barros Monteiro real? Most of the Google results for it are Lanaia posting about how they're publishing her poetry.

The only other results are a dead "barrosmonteiroeditorialpublishers.com" website that, when resurrected by Google Cache, shows a forum with two posts, both by Steve Whitehouse who is supposedly a poet with Barros Monteiro. One of them is an "interview" of Steve by BM, and the other isn't cached but by the post title is a "welcome to BM" by Steve.

A Google search for "Steve Whitehouse" and "Barros" only shows the forum posts. Using "poetry" instead of "Barros" shows a flash animator who I assume is a different person, and a couple of posts on a "Poetry Poetices" website. Nothing about the two-going-on-three books of poetry he's supposedly published, not even titles.

On the plus side, there weren't any results that showed Steve or Barros to be scams or frauds. I still think that this is probably another addition to the "Lanaia got taken for a ride" list, though.

#333

Okay, Lanaia, so you're in a wheelchair. Other people are in wheelchairs and don't use that fact as an excuse to do illegal things. And yes, even though you were duped originally, continuing to present a plagiarized work as your own is illegal.

Obviously, you can type and use a computer. So why has it been days since you found out that your story was plagiarized and yet it's still posted on-line, with your name on it, portrayed as your own material? Fix that one simple thing, and then people might start taking your apologies seriously.

The Barros Monteiro searches posted @ 341 were in response to the interview posted by tasha @ 331, by the way.

No I'm not Christopher HIll, never met, talked or e-mailed him and never want to, he's not worth the time of day. In his case, he's worth a huge curse.

The prologue has been re-written and solved. She has written an apology and it will be posted soon. In this case, I will post an apology on my business website stating this issue.

Lanaia--
That's not good enough. You need to take the prologue down now. If you bought a stolen TV and asked the cops to let you keep it until you could get another TV, they would say "No." You need to take the prologue down and put the other prologue up when you have it ready. Leaving the David Gemmel prologue on your site is wrong. It is as wrong as what the scammer did to you.

Abi @ 328... Life is not a Dickens novel; we are allowed more than one seamy character

We are? Bah humbug.

From Cheryl Pillsbury's "Lair" *careful, pop-up heaven*
"I graduated from Billerica Memorial High School in 1978, Middlesex Community College in 1990. I received an Associates Degree in Electronics. Vampires and demons have always been my passion since I was about eight years old. I continue to study and learn something new everyday. And now, I write stories and work from home and caring for daughter and her medical needs. Someday I wish to be published and share all of my adventures with everyone who enjoys this world, and the underworld."

So.. I'm just curious Cheryl what exactly qualifies you to represent authors?

Moira @ 340--I suspect that, if I called my lawyer and told him it was urgent, I could get legal help right now. This isn't because I'm rich, or have a lot of legal business: it's because he's semi-retired and I've known him all my life. You're assuming that the people invoking lawyers are cold-calling; it's possible that the lawyer in question is their cousin, old college roommate, or similar.

(Of course, if I were to call Fred and tell him, urgently, about a situation similar to Cheryl or Lanaia's, he'd probably point out that this isn't his field and tell him who else to call.)

Lanaia--
If you want to keep up your pretense as an innocent stroke survivor, take down the prologue. You just flunked my little test. In my real life, I deal with REAL stroke survivors and you are messing up your best and only defense.

Oh, and Cheryl, what an amazing person you are, playing with peoples' hopes and dreams and acting as intermediary where none is needed. Scum of the earth.

One day, ONE DAY, to do laundry and clean house and such, and I come back to... a trainwreck is too simple and the Titanic too small. It's like having a front row seat to Krakatoa.
Ye gods. Haven't these folks heard the old saw about "when you're in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging?"

Cheryl #344:

"In his case, he's worth a huge curse."

Thus making him exactly the opposite of you.

Roval Publishing, to the best of my knowledge, has never actually published a book.

Having worked for a number of creative, intelligent people who were perfectly comfortable sending email and posting on forums, yet hadn't the faintest idea of how any of these interweb-things actually worked, I'm not surprised that the text in question hasn't been taken down - the task is almost certainly being handled by a third party who doesn't necessarily feel a sense of urgency about it.

That being said, I *still* don't get the sense that the principles understand why everyone's so worked up about things...

Give Lanaia a break. It's very possible that she doesn't know how to alter her own website and must wait for someone else to help her out. She should, however, be prodding that person right now.

Is it possible Christopher Hill didn't write Atlantis Nights either? If I was an unscrupulous scam agent, rather than go to the trouble I'd copy an MS from one of my other clients. In which case, there's someone out there somewhere who thinks it's okay to steal from David Gemmell and who is now getting their comeuppance, but is probably unaware of it. Wouldn't that add another sick layer of complexity to this mess?

Oh, and Ryoval Publishing? They're trying to get Admiral Naismith to send them his memoirs - it's part of a convoluted plot to capture him, which is their entire raison d'etre.

Eleanor #354--She was able to remove a lot of very negative messages from her website just yesterday.

See what happens when you turn periods into commas: an Associates Degree in Electronics, Vampires and demons. Now that's a degree I'd want to study for. And not screw up on the practical.

Jim @352
It appears that Roval does indeed have one book published at least: here

Err, or is that via Lulu.com?

The first page shows: Roval Publishing Company, North Richland Hills, TX --- this matches with the Roval telly number area code 214 (full contact number: 214-347-7586 (residential line)) right about yonder.
So "the most advanced digital, self-publishing company in the US and the UK" is actually publishing through lulu.com?

So Cheryl takes money from authors and offers them services to get them published by Roval --- who again takes money from authors and offers them services so that they can get published through lulu?

Eleanor @ 354

What a relief! For a brief, horrified moment there I was afraid they were planning to publish the Baron's memoirs. There are some things humans were not meant to know.

I misspoke.

Roval has indeed published a book. Via Lulu.com.

Here it is.

ISBN 978-0-6151-4305-7

Oh now I'm really confused as to who's in charge of Roval Publishing... is it http://stores.lulu.com/jerry_adams ... Jeremy.Adams@RovalPublishing.net? Or is it Jeromil Valencia, publisher of this fine market guide for your success in publishing?

From the now-deleted Burlington Times article:

Mary is working on five books, and the first, titled “Of Atlantis,” will be released on barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com sometime in November, said Jerry Adams, publishing executive for Roval Publishing Company in North Richland Hills, Texas.

.. a book on ethical marketing?

Alright, is Alan Funt's Ghost hiding in the bushes?

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #358: The Baron's memoirs....

"I was born, as Richard Bruce Cheney, in the province of Wyoming on Earth, near Jackson's Hole. Later, when I had a whole planet to mold, I named it, whimsically as is my wont, after my favorite spot on Old Earth."

Fragano @ 363

Well, that might explain a few things about Darth Cheney (like the heart in the jar on the desk in his undisclosed location, or the undisclosed location itself). I didn't think that technology was quite that advanced, though.

That guide to successful marketing is available as a free download from Lulu: http://stores.lulu.com/jerry_adams (in addition to being available as a $6.93 hardcopy book). It's just a price-list for their marketing products.

They advertise spam email, among other things. For a $1K setup fee and $500/month they'll spam half-a-million addresses. For a mere fourteen-hundred bucks and six months lead time, they'll set up a booksigning for you! Oh, and for $1K they'll write a "professional review" of your book and submit it to the New York Times, San Francisco Examiner, Philadelphia Enquirer, Chicago Sun-Times, and Dallas Morning News. Exactly how they're going to get those papers to print the reviews they fail to mention.

This document has to be seen to be believed.

I think these guys have moved from the Yet-Another-Clueless-POD-Vanity-Press basement to a whole new level.

@333

Slyvia,
I agree! In the next couple of days, you will find an apology, and my dealings with Hill and Hill Literary Agency, and a rewrite to the prologue to Of Atlantis. I'm in a wheelchair but I can stand. Be in a wheelchair for awhile, it's not very funny.

Nice! Just when I thought nothing more pathetic and stupid could be said. Look, if you were to actually re-write the prologue, what would it accomplish? You still would have to write the entire book by yourself. Now I'm just really inclined to believe that there are people out there, including you of course, who just want to see their names on the cover of a book no matter what. I'm telling you, folks; just pathetic. Yikez!

@JKRichard #357: The area code for North Richland Hill is 817. That could be a cell number, which would cover the entire DFW area (and then some) without tolls.

Pathetic? I fired Christopher before I finshed the book. He was there for the prologue and chapters 1-4, the rest IS mine

Elanor:

Oh, and Ryoval Publishing? They're trying to get Admiral Naismith to send them his memoirs - it's part of a convoluted plot to capture him, which is their entire raison d'etre.

And I was assuming they specialized in medical texts. Very short print runs, mainly sold in New England, Transylvania, and possibly a drugstore in Chicago...

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers):

See what happens when you turn periods into commas: an Associates Degree in Electronics, Vampires and demons. Now that's a degree I'd want to study for. And not screw up on the practical.

Sounds like Job Fair day for The Laundry, doesn't it? Paging Bob Howard...

Lanaia @ 368 - Don't you mean "fired Christopher before HE finished the book?" And since he's written more than just what we've seen... have you checked chapters 1-4 for more plagiarized passages yet? You might want to ask someone familiar who would recognize such things to read it over for you.

Note: NOT Cheryl. She is obviously either not someone who would recognize such things, or she's someone who WOULD but actively ignored it when she read your book six times, or she never actually read your book.

I would suggest asking some of the more sympathetic people in this thread; perhaps Ilona Andrews (who noticed the prologue plagiarism), or Victoria Strauss, who is one of those who believes you were duped rather than duplicitous.

Barros & Montiero are also highly questionable. Several people (including myself) have pointed this out to Lanaia. I'm sorry to see how far this has gone.

If nothing else, I hope this whole unfortunate incident will keep some other new writers from falling into traps like this.

If there are other new writers reading this- I know how tempting it is to listen to someone who tells you your work is wonderful, and promises to help you get it in print. If I hadn't been lucky enough to meet some pros early on, I might've listened to the scammers too. But remember Yog's Law: "Money flows TO the writer!"

Lanaia @368

Even if Hill wrote only what you said, it is still pathetic because you claimed the book was completely yours when it really wasn't. "The Edgar Alan Poe of the Modern Age?" LMAO! Who the hell gave you that title?

That new interview blogpost has a "review payperpost" link at the bottom -- does that mean that Lanaia or Cheryl paid for the interview, or just that the blogger is willing to pay for links?

I'm beginning to think we should be charging for talking about them and the book.

Even if Lanaia cannot take the excerpt down from her own personal web site, she could be taking it down from the multitude of forums to which she posted it, or at the very least editing those posts to remove the excerpt and replace it with an apology.

She's made no effort to remove it from the web anywhere she's posted it.

@373 Todd Larason: That Pay Per Post button is for their Review My Post service. The idea is that on PPP member can review another's post and get paid. That service seems to be kind of controversial, but that's neither here nor there. That button is not an indication that someone paid for the interview.

Or, they might have paid. Check out this page on the site containing the interview.

They'll do a free product review in exchange for a link, or a paid review for $10. I'm not suggesting they paid; just pointing out that the site offers a paid service.

#313: <snicker>

#327: I'd think a genuine apology would be "game over" -- or was that the point?

Sylvia: "Brain-damaged" != "insane". In this case, I can't decide whether calling her insane is charitable or uncharitable.

Let me see if I have this straight:

A woman hires a ghostwriter at $400 per month to write a book...
Hires a fee-charging agent to sell the book...
And said agent "sells" the book to a vanity publisher...

Damn, if I weren't so honest, I could make a killing by posing as all three scammers at once.

Lania, honey, if you're still following this thread, please, please, PLEASE go to the library and bring home an armload of books on how to write a novel, how to get published by a real publisher, and how the publishing industry works. I wish someone would have given you that advice several years ago. It would have saved you tens of thousands of dollars and a mountain of heartache.

And Ms. Pillsbury -- for pity's sake, can you honestly look your clients in the eye and tell them that you'll be their agent in a deal with a VANITY PUBLISHER?!?! Like they can't deal with the vanity themselves? Like there's anything to negotiate? "Agent," my Aunt Fanny!

Fragano Ledgister @ 363

Super villain, indeed! Just as well Halliburton is mostly into construction and logistics; I shudder to think what he could have done if they were a biotech company.

Writerious @ 379 A woman hires a ghostwriter at $400 per month to write a book...
Hires a fee-charging agent to sell the book...
And said agent "sells" the book to a vanity publisher...

...and let's not forget: said vanity publisher only has one title published with an ISBN and it's through Lulu.com

Lanaia #368
Pathetic? I fired Christopher before I finshed the book. He was there for the prologue and chapters 1-4, the rest IS mine.

1) What does "the rest" mean, precisely, then?
2) If you were capable or willing to write this book why did you hire a ghostwriter at all?
3) After this fiasco, how seriously do you think anyone is going to take this book?
4)I return to what I said previously and I still think is your last best hope. ERASE ALL THIS. These books never happened for you. You've already "changed" your name to Lanaia Lee - change it again to something quite different, and if you really want to write a book... lady... go and write one. A DIFFERENT one. Something new and untainted by this train wreck. Ditch Cheryl, ditch Roval, ditch ghostwriters. No more excuses, no more throwing up disabilities for not doing the work, and by this stage I think you should have learned that it is a perilous path indeed to pay someone to publish your book before you've at the very least checked their credentials - and if you are capable of posting to Web forums you are capable of using Google with sufficient google-fu to do this.

I tell you this, once, twice, three times - the only way to be a writer is to write. Giving interviews to a local paper and seeing them calling you "an author" does not MAKE you one. Only writing a book does.

In the words Richard Bach, from a wonderful little book called "Illusions" (you should read it, maybe) - "You are never given a dream without the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however." The emphasis is mine. THe message is simple - if you truly have a dream, roll up your sleeves (metaphorically speaking) and get your own hands dirty. No amount of posturing and pleading and giving interviews to the press will take the place of this work.

That's it. In a nutshell. Make a choice.

Alright, is Alan Funt's Ghost hiding in the bushes?

I think we are far enough inside the Twilight Zone to suspect that it's Rod Serling's.

Alma, that's great advice, and well-put.

Lanaia; it is still up. You said hours ago it was going to be fixed soon.
I was trying to be sympathetic.
The fact that you cannot take the advice of people who truly want to be sympathetic tells me you are seeking attention.

That is a problem.
I'm loosing my sympathy rapidly.
~If Cheryl is your 'friend' why is she charging you money? Friends don't do that. People who do that are called con artists.
~You contacted V. Strauss in JUNE. Yet knowingly let the work be put up.

Don't blame it on being in a wheelchair; I think you would be surprised at how many here have been in a difficult spot. Calling out I'm Disabled! Pity me! means jack shit. I know a gentleman who writes great stories and is almost blind. I have never heard him use that as an excuse or to get sympathy.

That is why I am disgusted with your actions.
Take down the offending work. If you have someone else doing it why are you not riding their asses about fixing the site?

With all this negative attention why are you continuing to pursue this project which is tainted?
or is it because of the attention?

oh, my bad Cheryl stated it would be fixed soon.

[...] and a rewrite to the prologue to Of Atlantis. I'm in a wheelchair but I can stand. Be in a wheelchair for awhile, it's not very funny.

Oddly enough, 'Lanaia', I suspect several of us have '[been] in a wheelchair for a while', and yet we still somehow manage not to resort to plagiarism! Amazing... yet true. Can you do the rest of us a favour and quit making us look bad?

Incidentally, I've been a webmistress. If yours can't get a page offline for you urgently within 12 hours at the outside (assuming she'd just gone to sleep when you sent the message)? Fire her. Removing that prologue from your site's a five minute job, if that.

You know, I'm disabled. I have a brain injury from a fall. I have disabling headaches, can't add two and three without a calculator, and slur, stammer, and drool when I speak. I have never written a novel.

I still know enough not to plagiarize. I still know enough not to hire an agent or a publisher who requires payment in advance. I know enough to say "I'm sorry" when I screw up, NOT "I'm sorry but", which is not an apology but an excuse.

If the author is disabled enough that she could not understand the nature of the contracts she has signed, her guardian should look into whether the scammers can be charged criminally. If she is able to understand the nature, however, I think she bears some responsibility for this. But we can't really know on the Internet, can we?

Nearly 400 comments, and no one mentions Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky?

Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,

And so on.

Only be sure to call it, please, research.

With Laiania Lee playing part of Hypotenuse ?

More like the obtuse angle.

Only my web mistress can change my web site and she has all the new info, I have done nothing wrong, so my career continues. I know this will gripe you, in a way your helping Of Atlantis to become popular

Lanaia, do you like reading? What sort of books do you usually read? Who are your favourite authors? Who publishes them? What do you like about those books?

I'm asking this seriously.

And I have another serious question for you: you say you've done nothing wrong, so your career continues. If you had done something wrong, would it have to stop there?

Have there been times in your life before when you have done something you think was wrong? I'm not asking this to suggest that you're a bad person - everyone sometimes does things they'd rather not have done. What I want to know is what you did afterwards.

If you did something wrong, what would you do when you realised it was wrong?

Lanaia doesn't know it yet, but she has stepped outside of the world she knew - or should I say, the world she thought she knew - and has come to another place entirely. It is a place of skewed perceptions and reversed reality, a place where the impossible and the unbelievable has become something she knows to be true.

Do not try to adjust your set. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. You have taken leave of the world of reality and ordinary understanding. You have entered ... the Twilight Zone.

Only my web mistress can change my web site

Like I said, it doesn't take very long. If she 'has the info' and hasn't done it already, either you haven't told her it's urgent, or she's a crappy webmistress and you should fire her and hire someone who'll do the job.

Or else you're lying and you don't have any intention of taking it down. Frankly, that's my bet.

Lanaia, "I have done nothing wrong" misses half the point. What a lot of us are trying to tell you is that you have been foolish, and wasted a tremendous quantity of money and effort that you didn't need to. You didn't need a ghost writer, and you didn't need a fee fee-charging agent, and you didn't need a fee-charging publisher. You have given others a great deal of money to no avail whatsoever. That's money you could have had to spend on your own comfort and wellbeing, charity, whatever you chose.

If you need help writing, it's available for free. Andrew Burt's Critters workshop, for instance, has helped writers get a whole lot of stories and novels published by respectable publishers who pay you rather than the other way around. (His resources page there is also great - it takes you to a huge quantity of advice on research, writing, and publication from talented amateurs and famous professionals.) Victoria Strauss, of course, you know from her work exposing the fraud committed in your name; you would do well to review the backlog of other posts by her and A.C. Crispin to understand not just specific scams and tricks but the underlying principles, the kinds of things predators and con artists do in the world of publishing. And, of course, the couple who write this weblog here edit some of the best sf and fantasy writers in the world, and the home page for Making Light has dozens of links to people with wise and interesting things to say about creating prose.

Lanaia, you've been used badly...but the way you write about now makes you sound like someone who was ready to be used, and still is. You've been scammed in two different ways: it's not just the money you threw away, but audience. You haven't been dealing with legitimate publishers; your work (insofar as it was your work) wouldn't have ever been seen by more than a tiny handful of people, most of them your fellow victims in that type of scam. What you say right here is being read by many thousands of people, and the same would be true of your contributions in a good workshop. If your work ever reaches honestly publishable condition, it'll go out to a real audience, too.

But right now you're conducting yourself like someone ready to fall for the next appealing-sounding scheme. What makes a writer isn't publication but writing. Write. If writing is your calling, serve it well with the best craft you can. Improve your grammar. Practice. If you want some useful advice on the practicalities of writing, try the Writer's Digest Elements of Fiction series of books, in which successful authors explain the nuts and bolts of subjects like characterization & viewpoint, plotting, effective beginnings, middles, & ends, dialogue, and the like. Read...and then write. Write more. Keep writing. Study up on scams and predators...and write. Seek out honest evaluations...and write. Write. Learn how legitimate publishing works, and when you feel ready, submit...and in the meantime, write.

You clearly have enthusiasm and desire. Please, Lanaia, don't do things that will make you the subject of another analysis of a scam in a year, or three, or five. If you truly want to be an author, want it enough to earn it legitimately, and want it enough to want it free of scam and sleaze. And in the meantime, write.

I actually wonder if there's much further point in this conversation. Either she's too impaired to understand, or she's determined not to. Either way, it's pretty clear no actual information is getting across.

Oh, yeah, one other thing I forgot to add:

In the modern era of the Internet, it's possible to have a huge audience without ever going through the traditional publication process. There are LiveJournal communities that host stories read by thousands of people. Some fan fiction sites get more. Workshops like Critters have huge pools of contributors and readership. One of the reasons scams like for-fee publishing work is because people get hung up on tokens of accomplishment rather than the thing they symbolize.

Books are neat - I have thousands of them myself, including ones with my name on them, and I'm not proposing to give them up. But the books are only vessels, carrying my words (and the work of everyone else who makes a book happen, including editor, illustrators, designers, and on) to the reader. In some cases, I can do as well to reach the real people I want to share a thought and prose with some other way. The fundamentals still apply, like "If you're paying for it, money is moving in the wrong direction." But it's worth looking around sometimes to see what others who have a particular kind of tale to tell are doing to tell it. The universe of ways of sharing that aren't just scams and hustles is very large these days.

Patrick, I do admit that I see myself as sort of writing for the gallery here. I usually assume that for any non-troll poster, there's someone thinking the same kind of thing but not yet posting about it.

This is, if Gemmell fans will excuse the pun, fast becoming the stuff of legend. It calls for a short, snappy name for when we regale youngsters with tales of it in the years to come.

I propose "GemmellGate".

#378: Damn, if I weren't so honest, I could make a killing by posing as all three scammers at once.

A new verse for "My God, how the money rolls in"?

Re: Lanaia's last.
Seems, among myriad other things, she also confuses notoriety with reputation.

Bernita @ 402

Or confuses notoriety with fame.

My uncle's an agent for writers
He'll represent you for some tin
My aunt runs the press that he sells to
My Ghod how the money rolls in.

P J Evans #364: Indeed!

Eva Lynn @ 395 - my theory is that Lanaia didn't try to get the sample text taken down until she was ready to replace it - which is a definite sign of Not Catching Clue. I don't think either Lanaia or her webmaster see taking down the original text as any kind of priority.

I do foresee entertainment when the replacement text does go up: I predict the replacement text is going to be just a high-school attempt to file the serial numbers off the original chapters.

I lie to aspiring writers
they pay me so much it's a sin;
I do the whole thing without conscience,
my god how the money rolls in!

@406 - Are you in email correspondence with Lee because I am pretty sure that's exactly what is going on. Having seen the revised portion, it is a fairly incoherent paraphrasing of the original Gemmell material.

I've told Ms. Lee that while the revision might not be a copyright infringement, it might still be considered plagiarism. I've told her that by claiming the plagiaristic material as her own, even if it is was ghostwritten, still makes her responsible. I've encouraged her to seek counsel other than from Cheryl Pillsbury and Pillsbury's "attorney".

I think Lee thinks that because Hill scammed her, she bears no responsibility in this endeavor. She doesn't really acknowledge that she engaged in any misrepresentations such as in the interview with Burlington Times.

Nothing is getting through to Lee or Pillsbury and I don't think anything will.

#408: Nothing is getting through to Lee or Pillsbury and I don't think anything will.

Well, on the bright side(?), I suppose if Lee has so much money to burn on scam artists, at least she might be able to afford the eventual judgement against her if/when Gemmell's estate sues.

@406: You're likely right, on both counts.

I know this will gripe you, in a way your helping Of Atlantis to become popular

Here's the thing - if people here wished you ill, they would be hoping for Of Atlantis to become "popular".

Because up to this point, you've arguably represented someone else's work as your own through a series of (implausible, but possible) misunderstandings. Now, you acknowledge that you know you're representing someone else's work as your own, and you've chosen to continue doing so.

If someone buys it, you've sold something which you admit you have the right to sell, almost certainly across state lines.

If anyone here was out to get you, they'd be shipping copies to their friends.

^don't^ have. Don't mind me.

Well talk about kick a fellow when they are down Its like watching a pack of savage hounds ripping the throat out the one that strayed from the pack You criticize because she employed a ghost writer are you telling me this does not happen and yes she was a little foolish to not keep a tighter check but she is not the first to be conned and she will not be the last her work has given so much pleasure to readers all over the world yet you don't take that into consideration and the vile insults about her disability's I thought it was only the Brits who were so callus may be you could all do with a little humility

Ian: First, please learn about punctuation. This isn't being fussy - it's a well-documented fact that punctuation and capitalization have a really significant effect on readers' understanding and retention of a passage's meaning.

Second: When leading professionals try to help someone understand what they did wrong, how to avoid it in the future, and how to achieve success as a writer without being scammed, that's not picking on them. That's generosity. Scam artists offer inferior advice, with fewer qualifications for it, and charge big bucks. Generous pros and fans do it for free. If you and/or Lanaia, assuming for the moment you are two different people, don't get the difference, then you do deserve what comes next.

Bear in mind that, at least according to the most recent interview link posted (#331), that Ms. Lee tells us she "came as far as most writer do in ten years in only four years", and then tells us above in #392 that her career continues (presumably along a similar path as it had previously).

I must sadly confess to you all that my own very small writing career, in approximately that same four year window, has left my reputation and integrity intact, is running in the black, and I've very stupidly sat down and ground out all my words one by one (sometimes even going back and changing or rearranging them!) all by my lonesome self. I can see now how short-sighted and foolish I have been, and how many hours of my life this writing has consumed when it could have been better spent on interviews and writing big fat checks to helpful scammers who could have made me "popular". Oh, woe is I!

I console myself by abandoning this conversation for a little while so that I can sit once again at my computer and write more words the hard way, having obviously learned nothing...

Scam artists offer inferior advice, with fewer qualifications for it, and charge big bucks. Generous pros and fans do it for free.

... No, that's too easy.

Suzanne, you selfish toad. There are starving scam artists going to bed without any pilfered lucre at all, and you sit there with income. How dare you withhold it from them? Have you no sympathy for the plight of the morals-deprived? Open your wallet and give generously!

Now I need to get to work too; got an outline I should finish today.

Joel, you are a bad, bad man. Thank you for the laugh. Making Light does teach one caution in phrasing.

I have read this complete board and still I come back to my original question.

When Ms. Lee received her manuscript back from the ghostwriter, did she not read through it to make sure he hadn't changed her voice?

I don't know anything about using a ghostwriter, but I do know my style of writing as I am sure every writer does as well.

Something seems amiss here.

Susan

Hey I don't profess to be a writer or particularly well educated and the first thing you pick on is my Punctation I now understand were the venom comes from is this only for the well educated or perhaps the reading public are not welcome to leave there comments and I am totally amazed you can not tell the difference if only I had half her talent it makes me wonder how you sit in judgment perhaps you may do a search om me

Ian Williamson

Please learn to use punctuation, because what you've written so far in your comments (both of them) is, to put it bluntly, unreadable. (It's also fairly incoherent, but that's a different problem.)

This is a side issue, but something I'd really like to know. Several comments above made Lulu.com sound very shady, but a previous thread made it sound like an OK place for my Mom to send a family history and get a few copies printed and bound up, with no delusions of wide distribution via Barnes & Noble, etc.

Should we avoid Lulu like the plague? If so, is there a reasonable alternative?

My sense of Lulu.com is that they're a perfectly respectable operation. If you've got a book, a CD, a mouse pad, or a mug, they'll manufacture it for you at a decent rate, without putting forth any vanity-press-style claims to offer marketing services, distribution, etc.

Viable Paradise alum and occasional ML commenter Mur Lafferty works for them. Everything I've heard about them makes them seem like an honest business.

Jim Macdonald can probably tell you more; they produced the print edition of Atlanta Nights.

Susan @ 418... I do know my style of writing as I am sure every writer does as well.

I wonder what the Voice of my writing is like... Groucho, Harpo (honk!) and Chico all rolled into one, maybe?

Patick... How does FictionWise.com operate?

Serge, I don't believe you can get a book on Fictionwise.com without a history of previously released books:

"minimum of 10 reprints that are either novels published by established print publishers (not vanity presses or similar outfits that charge the author)"

Link here

I don't think there's anything wrong with lulu.com; AFAIK they're a straightforward print-on-demand shop and don't pretend to be anything else. For certain types of publication, they're completely suitable.

But as with any PoD, publication with them isn't much of a "credential" per se; one cannot assume that the published material is reliable, honest, or in any sense "good". It's a little like some of the quack herbal medicines that I've seen advertised as having been "included in the Physician's Desk Reference!" Getting something into the PDR is merely a matter of paying the publisher to include it -- there's no peer review or anything like that -- but being able to say that the thing is in print lends it an aura of credibility to the large number of people who don't know about the business.

Jane @ 425... Thanks for the link. I'll look some more into it then mention it to my wife. She is professionally published and has quite a few novels out there so she'd meet their requirements. She also has a few novellas that went out-of-print and I think it's a shame that they did.

Ian, punctuation counts. Spelling counts. Grammar counts. If anyone's ever told you these things are not important, he or she's done you a disservice. People who care about writing will not respond positively to someone who ignores the basics.

Faren @421:

lulu.com is not to blame for any of the kerfuffle.

They are, as far as anyone can make out, completely honest: they let you upload a file and take a reasonable percentage of the price for themselves. They will do print runs of one, they have a website that is geared towards readers as much as writers, and they don't sell you $$$$ services or charge 'setup fees' goinig into hundreds and thousands of dollars, with the quality of service usually much poorer than what you would see from a reputable freelance editor/copy editor/book designer.

In short, they compare extremely favorably with any other vanity publisher. What *is* interesting is that here is a vanity publisher - Royal - who uses another vanity publisher - lulu - to produce the physical book - quite probably because they can't be bothered to find a POD printer willing to deal with them.

re 412: looks like someone's opened the sock drawer.

Faren Miller (421): I think the criticisms were not of Lulu (which did I wonderful job on the family history volume I had printed two years ago), but of the fact that Roval claims to be a publisher, but released its book through another source.

The scummy thing about agents claiming to represent people, and taking money to have their books printed via lulu.com, is that you don't need any intermediary to deal with lulu (or Cafe Press, or similar short-run digital printers geared towards self-publishing comic books like ComiXpress and Kablam) - they're set up so that any individual can send them files and buy copies of the books. They even have help for people who have never set up their own pdf files for printing, don't know what "bleed" means, etc.

It's as if I promised special delivery of something, charged you a courier's fee (perhaps with a "discount") and then took it to FedEx or Airborn or UPS and sent it overnight, and pocketed the extra hundreds of dollars. FedEx etc aren't in any way to blame - they did what they were paid to do - but you could have as easily gone down to the box yourself, and for a lot less money, and you didn't get the exclusive, personally-protected and hand-carried service you thought you were getting.

(Ian thinking that punctuation is an elite invention designed to squelch creativity and oppress the masses is an extra burst of candy from this pinata...)

to mister ian williamson
you are quite correct
punctuation is very much over rated
and as long as the lettres and are
words in correct order and speeled
something close to what you mean
what harm is there in an
idiosyncratic
text style

besides
as we cockroaches know
with our gymnastic efforts at
the keyboard
punctuation hurts
your pal, -ow- -ow-
archy

#423 Serge

Thanks for the laugh. I needed that.
S

Ian Williamson(412)

As I'm British, may I request a clarification here? Are you accusing me and my fellow citizens of being cruel and heartless, or simply of being covered in hard skin as a result of repeated abrasion in a particular place? It makes a real difference to my proposed response.

It's my understanding that publishing something through Lulu also doesn't get you tied up in contracts or weird copyright tomfoolery. You could theoretically publish something through them and then a week later have it accepted for publication by, say, Tor, with no problem. Whereas with PublishAmerica and, I assume, Roval, once you fall into their web, you're kinda stuck.

Is this by and large correct?

Ian's web page reveals this personal philosophy (no punctution or coherency here, either, so he's not just doing it for us):
"Life is a long road and every so often one needs a new pair of boots to Carry on or kick them out of the way When people try to stop you because there are no free bus passes"

His favorite book is LotR (movie, too), he likes the Beatles, beer, fishing and gardening. He's married to someone he calls "my lovely gaffer". (It does sound like he married his grandfather, but I'm sure it's just an unusual nickname." (Drat! Now I've got I'm My Own Grandpa running through my head. My band does it. Not exactly traditional Irish, but always a crowdpleaser, especially in Georgia.)

It seems to me that on another day, in other circumstances, Lanaia, Ian and even Cheryl could have started posting on ML and fit it. Maybe they think they do.

BTW, it looks like Roval has two titles.
Resposible Marketing looks like a self-published textbook by a Jesuit professor in Detroit. The Marketing Guide (download for free) is an extended advertisement for vanity publishing and promotion with Roval. Changing "Jeromil Valencia" to the more-pronouncable-and-spellable-by-Americans "Jerry Adams" for professional reasons makes perfect sense.

I used Lulu for a family history book last year. As long as you can format the book to .pdf, you're golden.

No contract, no minimums, no fuss. Perfect for such things as family histories and recipe books and the like.

Ian...punctuation helps us to understand you more clearly, that's all. Read about the panda who eats, shoots, and leaves if you don't believe me.

Thank you archy has a matter of fact the comments did hurt and a do have arthritis and do tend to hit the wrong keys and this one kind comment is much appreciated .

now A.J.Hall I to am British with a disabled wife and have experienced the verbal abuse of my fellow country men quote shift your wheelchair ,you should be put down, you should not be allowed out .
I could go on but I will grant one thing for every ten that abuse there is one who will stand shoulder to shoulder with you .

So I am sorry if you don't like the way I write But In this world one is still allowed to have an opinion after all isn't this what comment boxes are for

Ian

#439: Oh, God. They really think we're stupid..

Isn't it time to reveal some IP addresses?

I, too, used Lulu earlier this year (for a collection), and I think Patrick's calling it "manufacturing" rather than "publishing" ("they'll manufacture it for you at a decent rate") is spot-on. There are no contracts or minimums; it's a very specific service that doesn't actually include many others. So far as I know, there are no options for production or editing; when it comes to books, they accept .pdf files they print (or have a converter). I'm pretty certain that, unlike most other POD options (BookSurge, PA, et al.), there are no options to pay an editor or get a cover designed or the like.

What I basically found is that the more you know what you're doing (I had some editing experience of trade publications, and knew lay-out/design software like Quark, InDesign, and Photoshop well), the better will be the ultimate product. In addition, there are interesting distribution/availability options (I opted not to use an ISBN, which means, nope, can't get my collection anywhere but there. But if you go there, you can get most of the stories in the collection as free downloads).

I've been pleased, but I'm also in a unique situation, what with grad school and the resources to which I have access. As with all such things, mileage varies. Lulu can be used well, or it can be used pretty badly.

Thanks, Will #441; I have a minor project that Lulu sounds like a good fit for. ...and since I have my copy of Atlanta Nights <g>, I have a good idea of their quality of production.

Watching this is like watching the cats play with a new felt mouse stuffed with nip. Bat it around for a bit then savage rip, happy acrobatics, followed by floor hockey and it ends with the tattered remains brought to your feet with big eager pleading eyes of "Make it wiggle for us mum."

With Lulu they are the printer and you are the publisher.

Ian,

I'm also British, and for many years I had a wheelchair-bound wife. I too get very cross with prejudice against the disabled, or even the thoughtlessness with which they're often treated. (For one thing, just because someone is in a wheelchair, it does not mean that they are numb from the chest down. Sometimes, quite the opposite.)

But - and this is a big but - it also really upsets me when people try to use disability as an excuse for laziness or dishonesty, because this is what often encourages the sort of attitudes you complain about. The problem that a lot of people around here have with Lanaia is that she seems to be saying "I'm disabled, so I shouldn't be held to normal standards of behavior." That's not just rubbish, it's extremely insulting to disabled people everywhere.

Lanaia, I've just read through all of the comments above with increasing sadness.

I've known you a little through your posting on my own poetry site and I have not found you to be objectionable at all there. I feel so sorry about what has happened to you, being scammed as you were and paying out good money to a con man who seems in the first place to have first taken advantage of your dream and then subsequently betrayed you in the most despicable way.

And, your agent it seems to me has not made things better. I'm afraid her perhaps well-meaning attempts to shield you from attack have only made her look arrogant and aggressive when a proper handling would have been to soberly address each issue and deal with it responsibly and quickly.

That the offending piece still remains open to view on the web is very hard for everyone to understand. Plagiarism is an extremely serious offence punishable by law. This piece should have vanished from the web at the very moment the truth was discovered by both others and yourself.

From my limited knowledge of you I believe you to be a decent person but I think you would admit you are right out of your depth here. I would urge you to take the advice of Bruce Baugh up above to heart. You have every right to experience the greatest joy in your writing and I am sure you can again once you manage to get all concerned to do the right thing.

And the first thing is to have them remove every trace of the handiwork of Mr Hill that is on the web in your name.

Take care.

All the best,

Allan

hello Simon

I accept all you say it is difficult to stand by and listen to unnecessary abuse of the disable especially when you suffer it on a daily bases or at least every time we are out.

I would add how ever whether or not she did or did not commit this act the things I have read hear have already found guilty and executed her with out trial.
and may I thank you for not criticising my punctuation

my respects
Ian Paul

#388--Owlmirror--I was waiting for Lobachefsky,too.

#419--Ian Williamson,I have inflammatory arthritis of the female (and I'd like to know who names these things!). My hands are the most affected after my knees. But I still can use punctuation. I misuse it a lot, too, but can't blame the dear old arthritis. I have the fingers of somebody 30 years older than I am and I am pretty old. It's not that much extra effort to use punctuation. Swear.

#433--Oh, heavens, I'd forgotten Archy.
Mehitabel--"Kittens? What kittens?"

Ian Paul (Williamson?)@446: I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and explain this to you in words of one syllable.

Ms. Lee's ghostwriter (accepting her version of the events) ripped off a well known fantasy writer. Shamelessly and without any possibility of question. THE WHOLE FIRST PAGE OF A NOVEL WAS REPRODUCED. The moment Ms. Lee's manuscript hit the internet it was recognized by other authors as well as fans of the writer in question. When it was pointed out to Ms. Lee and her agent, first, they insisted it was Ms. Lee's work, then told us all about the ghostwriter, and finally offered a half-assed apology BUT continued (and still continue, AFAIK) to show the text of Ms. Lee's novel on her website. The people in this list were threatened with legal action (snicker) and witchcraft (double snicker).

This is a site of writers (both amateurs and professionals) and publishers (ditto). They have tried to point out to Ms. Lee and her agent the kind of legal mess they have stepped into: if you think that the heirs and publisher of an author whose work is still copyrighted are going to stand for outright copying, you don't know much about the business of publishing--nor to mention pissed-off relatives. I have been a visitor and sometime poster here for years, and NEVER have I seen anyone who joined the conversation with honesty and good arguments be treated with anything but kindness and respect.

And btw, a number of the people posting here have severe disabilities -- none of them use it as an excuse to behave badly. One of the best people I ever met in these threads --we exchanged I think a single sentence or two, I cannot claim friendship-- was to his dying day severely hampered by bad health and he NEVER NEVER EVER moaned and bitched about it as much as Ms. Lee. His was a life lived with honor -- so far, Ms. Lee has played the victim but has not done the honorable thing.

Emma
and all this is a good enough reason to attack me because of the way I write

1)Ian: First, please learn about punctuation. This isn't being fussy - it's a well-documented fact that punctuation and capitalization have a really significant effect on readers' understanding and retention of a passage's meaning.
2)Please learn to use punctuation, because what you've written so far in your comments (both of them) is, to put it bluntly, unreadable. (It's also fairly incoherent, but that's a different problem.)
3)(Ian thinking that punctuation is an elite invention designed to squelch creativity and oppress the masses is an extra burst of candy from this pinata...)

All this because I left a comment Thank god for spell check then you could real humiliate me with out it I passed an opinion I did not excuse any actions apart from a later post were I stated its a little early to find some one guilty before trial.

Ian: did you examine the evidence above, or did you just come here and post because Lanaia asked you to? If it's the latter, you're not helping her. You're just making it worse.

My goodness.

She was at it last month in another newspaper, too:

"
To say Mary Kellis has been through a lot is an understatement.

She's endured an aneurysm, a stroke, a coma and losing all her family members. But she refuses to let any of that stop her.

Unable to work, Kellis turned to her longtime hobby of writing poetry and short stories as therapy.

...

Kellis, who writes under the pseudonym Lanaia Lee, is the poet on staff for Pillsbury's company Publishing Consultants.

"She's very good," Pillsbury said. "I think she could give ('Harry Potter' author J.K.) Rowling a run for her money. The story she's come up with is fascinating."

or

flogging her story w/ blog editors:
"THUMB’S UP to the inspirational story of Mary Kellis, the author of “Of Atlantis,” the first of a five-part book series to be released this fall. Kellis, of Burlington, suffered a stroke 15 years ago and with husband David (who is confined to a wheelchair after an accident in the early 1980s) are reminders that people overcome great odds in times of crisis, which makes us wonder why we can’t do so when times are good."

So... another few more instances of her cvlaiming it was all her own work, and cashing in on a built in sob story.

And the excerpt is still up!

And there's been no admission of wrong doing.

Also, Cheryl sent me an email calling me a slanderer, and said that her email was for "fans of angrus grady" only.

I posted the following on the "Long Story Short" website guestbook, timestamp Sunday, 10/14/07, 2:22 PM:

The "Prologue - Of Atlantis" by Lanaia Lee is essentially identical to the first chapter of Dark Prince (1993) by David Gemmell, with the name "Alexander" sometimes (not always) changed to "Archimedes".

This is blatant (and sloppy) plagiarism. It has been exposed as such. Why is it still posted proudly on your website?

Ian,

Language is such a thin cord to connect one human brain to another human brain†. Written language is even thinner, the merest thread, because all of the added elements of tone and mannerism are gone.

Many of the people on this blog work with, and indeed make their livings from, written language. Everyone on this blog plays with written language; that's why we're here. We care an awful lot about language.

The actions that Lamaia and Cheryl admit to - putting one person's name to another person's prose (whether it was Hill's or Gemmel's) are a violation of a key principle of written language: that a writer only claims credit for his or her own words. No "trial" is needed - they said they did this thing. We have been trying to explain why it is so very bad, and what the best action is to make up for it.

We have, as a group, additional problems with Cheryl's business model, which does not actually fit in with the way the business of publishing works. Agents who charge authors up front for representing them*, and who then arrange for the authors to pay to get books published** are generally considered fraudsters. Cheryl is getting off lightly in this crowd.

By contrast, the comments addressed to you concern a minor pecadillo, a mere venial sin of tangling that precious thread of communication, almost breaking that connection between what you mean and what we see. You're messing with something we love, and it's not easy to sit still with that - particularly when you're doing it in defense of the greater transgression.

-----
† I am paraphrasing Teresa Nielsen Hayden, one of the proprietors of this blog

* as opposed to taking a percentage of sales revenue

** as opposed to getting them contracts with publishers that do all that for another percentage of sales revenue

Ian,

The thing is, Lainaia has really not helped herself - and her 'agent' has made things much worse for her by some of the very arrogant and silly things she has said.

When someone starts out by lying, then admits they were lying but still does not fix the problem (as of now, 10.30 pm Sunday, Lanaia has still not taken down the ripped-off story from her web page), are you surprised that people give her a hard time?

As for the whole spelling and punctuation issue, for one reason or another this is an area that a lot of people on this board are very hot on. In fact, I think it's fair to say that many people here will take poor spelling and/or punctuation as someone actively disrespecting them - it's like saying "I don't care enough about you to make what I'm saying clear or easy to read, so screw you." You might think this is strange or rude, but that is really how many people feel. In fact, they probably think that you are the one who is being rude.

What I'd like to ask before discussing this further is:

Do you have a problem with typing that makes it difficult or awkward to spell or punctuate?

Or do you feel that spelling and punctuation are not that important?

If the first, then it is unreasonable for people to get upset about it. If though the second is true, then at the very least a lot of people here are going to disagree with you, some very forcefully.

Yours,

Simon Bradshaw, Edinburgh

I'm surprised someone hasn't sent a DMCA takedown notice to the ISP yet. That would get the infringing material yanked sooner than the author seems inclined to do. If the site owner doesn't understand copyright infringement, I sure betcha homestead.com does.

You know, I'm picky about spelling and grammar - ask anyone. But I've come to know Ian fairly well, online, over the past few months. He's got a good heart.

Ian would jump to the defense of anyone he felt was being unjustly attacked. He might jump too soon, as appears to be the case here. (I am also a b**** when it comes to plagiarism and copyright violation, and have little sympathy for those who commit it - and none for those who make lame excuses for it.) But be kind - not all of your readers have your skills in writing. They are still your readers, and they still buy books.

tasha
Up to now all I have seen is the evidence for the prosecution I would like to hear the defences side before I pass judgment.
and no i was not sent this is but one of many sites I view on a regular Bases but very rarely post Has a rule there is an interesting format but this constant reference to her disability.
If you have ever been interviewed by a reporter you will know this is the meat to the story and that is why it will be constantly referred to
You think perhaps because she has over come her handicap and made a success of what she has achieved should be flushed down the pan because she has been conned and I dare say some of the people here have been conned in one form or another.
but you are right I am not helping her but I am speaking for all those that manage to achieve some thing despite of there disability's and that factor should not enter into the subject in question .
was she or wasn't she conned only a court of law will decide not mass hysteria

tasha
Up to now all I have seen is the evidence for the prosecution I would like to hear the defences side before I pass judgment.
and no i was not sent this is but one of many sites I view on a regular Bases but very rarely post Has a rule there is an interesting format but this constant reference to her disability.
If you have ever been interviewed by a reporter you will know this is the meat to the story and that is why it will be constantly referred to
You think perhaps because she has over come her handicap and made a success of what she has achieved should be flushed down the pan because she has been conned and I dare say some of the people here have been conned in one form or another.
but you are right I am not helping her but I am speaking for all those that manage to achieve some thing despite of there disability's and that factor should not enter into the subject in question .
was she or wasn't she conned only a court of law will decide not mass hysteria

For whatever this is worth, my site is hosted by a Long Story Short, I have sent the web mistress numerous e-mails to change the prologue, and I hope by tommorrow it will be changed. I mean no harm. Cheryl bought the book Dark Prince over the weekend,so we cam compare it to Of Atlantis. The book is now on hold until we get resolved. I know every body thinks this is totally my fault but I never even heard of David Gemmel until Thursday. I take respondsibility foy my part. If I could chamge the prologue right now, I would do so. A Long Story Short has a site, go to it and contact the web mistess to change the prologue
Thank you and please don't judge me too harshly!
Lanaia

WADR, Mr. Williamson, I've seen people with worse punctuation than yours, and worse grammar, treated quite respectfully here. I've rarely seen anyone who came in with their fists flying get very far.

You accused a group of strangers of crude bigotry. In order to do that, you had to decide that everything that was written on that subject in the preceding 400+ posts wasn't true.

Sounds a bit like finding someone guilty before trial, that does.

tasha
Up to now all I have seen is the evidence for the prosecution I would like to hear the defences side before I pass judgment.
and no i was not sent this is but one of many sites I view on a regular Bases but very rarely post Has a rule there is an interesting format but this constant reference to her disability.
If you have ever been interviewed by a reporter you will know this is the meat to the story and that is why it will be constantly referred to
You think perhaps because she has over come her handicap and made a success of what she has achieved should be flushed down the pan because she has been conned and I dare say some of the people here have been conned in one form or another.
but you are right I am not helping her but I am speaking for all those that manage to achieve some thing despite of there disability's and that factor should not enter into the subject in question .
was she or wasn't she conned only a court of law will decide not mass hysteria

I think it is a shame that Lanaia gets abused but absolute bastards like Pierre Menard seem to get away with it.

multi post was not intentional

Ian Williamson: there is no question that "Lanaia Lee" did "this thing," i.e. copied someone else's work and passed it off as her own. She has admitted it. No trial is required.

She then goes on to give a number of excuses for her behavior, including that she had a stroke and is in a wheelchair.

It's regretful that Mary Kellis has had a stroke, an aneurysm, been in a coma, etc. I am sympathetic to her personal difficulties. I am willing to accept that it is possible that she did not know someone she hired had ripped off the first chapter of David Gemmell's novel and passed it off as hers. She was inattentive and foolish. But she needs to make it right by apologizing, ceasing to display the work on her website, ceasing to claim it to be entirely her own words, and so on.

I assert that none of what I have written above is abusive to her.

Ian,

I just find it interesting that your first post here occurred immediately after Lanaia asked her yahoo group members to post here, and that you responded to her by saying some very unflattering things about everyone here. I suppose that's just coincidence.

Cheers,
Tasha, one of the self opiniated bigots

Holly, I'm not just fussing for the sake of fussing. Part of my disability from auto-immune problems is multiple blind spots in each eye, and real difficulty parsing some kinds of text. When people say "correct punctuation and capitalization assist reading comprehension by the visually impaired", that's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight. I can, literally, follow streams of relatively undifferentiated text like Ian's only with substantial effort and real pain.

Miss Manners often says that one of the great benefits of etiquette is that you don't have to know others' circumstances - you know something to do that's appropriate regardless of who they are. Good orthography works like that, too.

bryan at 462, I find your sense of humor to be a tad... quixotic.

Ian Williamson @ 461

I am speaking for all those that manage to achieve some thing despite of there disability's and that factor should not enter into the subject in question .

As a number of posters have pointed out to you, disability does not enter into it. A number of people here are disabled, several quite severely, yet none of them bring it up as an excuse for bad behavior; we don't expect anyone else to.

The bad behavior, as has also been pointed out a number of times, was admitted by Ms. Lee and Cheryl, her agent; the issue is not whether there was plagiarism, but what should be done about it. So far what they've done about it is not sufficient in most people's estimation. If you have a problem with that, please explain what that problem is; please do not resort to claims of privilege based on disability; it's not an acceptable argument.

And if you think this is an attack, then you're not reading it carefully; it is an attempt to get you to understand something that hasn't seemed to get through to you: that your statement that this group has been intolerant is not correct, and in fact rather insulting in its wrongness.

Since Of Atlantis is purportedly the tale of time-traveling Imhotep, I looked at Lee's poem "Inhotep" [sic], to see what her non-ghostwritten work is like.

Leaving aside the poetic flaws, there are some glaring homonymbly-pegs ("sight" for "site", "dessicate" for "desecrate" -- "if you desiccate the tomb you will suffer a terrible fate"), and a reckless disagreement in number ("Wondering if the Egyptian curse we hear about this place are really true?").

Far from full-scale editing, this hasn't had the most basic proofreading, but badly needed it.

So this is "the Edgar Allen Poe of the Modern Era"? Perhaps in one sense. To deflect any criticism of dishonesty by depicting it as abuse of the disabled is a wonderful diddle indeed.

For those wondering what Tasha is referring to at 465, see this.

Mary, In relation to the email you sent out to members of your yahoo group - I'd just like to point out that I am not "a nut", and I am not "out to ruin your name".

Nor are the other people whose comments you have erased from your shoutbox.

We were stating a fact. There was no defamation, we stated that the prologue from "Of Atlantis" was in fact lifted from the David Gemmell novel "Dark Prince", and that is was not written by you. (something which you have still not done yourself)

If you can erase well meaning comments, you should be able to place a comment of your own stating that the prologue was not written by you.

You seem to be keeping up with the comments on here so hopefully you will read this, and place a suitable comment.

Oh dear.

It does appear, Mr. Williamson, that there really was bad faith involved here.

and no i was not sent this is but one of many sites I view on a regular Bases but very rarely post

vs.

I believe you I have never come across a bigger bunch of self opinionated bigots in all my life and you can quote me
Best wishes

Ian Williamson

and it seems, Mr. Williamson, that the bad faith is yours.

Not very nice, Mr. Williamson.

Those who have insinuated that Christopher Hill dedicated his life to writing a contemporary Atlantis calumniate his illustrious memory.

He did not want to compose another Atlantis —which is easy— but the Atlantis itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide—word for word and line for line—with those of Mark Mitchell.

“My intent is no more than astonishing,” he wrote me the September 11, 2001, from New York City. “The final term in a theological or metaphysical demonstration—the objective world, God, causality, the forms of the universe—is no less previous and common than my famed novel. The only difference is that the philosophers publish the intermediary stages of their labor in pleasant volumes and I have resolved to do away with those stages.” In truth, not one worksheet remains to bear witness to his years of effort, however there are several invoices for payment that have been burnt to ash, and the ashes used to demonstrate a good intent and lack of guile by those that have since inherited his texts.

The first method he conceived was relatively simple. Be a golden haired child, have his father die, live in an utopian nation drowned in a deluge, be Mark Mitchell. Christopher Hill studied this procedure (I know he in fact wrote a hit song as Mark Mitchell http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009052.html#190771 ) but discarded it as too easy, and financially non-remunerative (due to RIAA attacks on his copyright of the song in question).

Oh yes... i forgot to post the yahoo message i was replying to.

From Lanaia

I need your help, read the page I sent you, you know me would you go to
the yell box on my website and Making Light: Weirdly Similar....post
something positive. I really need this, to show me some one has faith
in me

Thanks and hugs,
Mary

http://www.alongstoryshort.net/lanaialee.html my site

These are lies, I did nothing wrong, these nuts are ruining my name

and link to page - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lanaia/message/314

Todd @ 470

That message clinches it; I no longer believe that Mary, or whatever she wants us to call her, is innocent of any wrong-doing*. Her own words have convinced me of her guilt and of her unwillingness to repair the damage she's done. Better by far, for her, had she simply shut up 2 days ago, and left many of us feeling that she didn't understand what was going on; by going on as she has, she's convinced a lot of us of the opposite.

She might have even been better off if we were all convinced this was an attack of the sockpuppets; we wouldn't have been as ready to accept how many people have been lied to by the principals of this travesty.

* I only believed it about 10% by this point, probably too tolerant considering I've read this entire thread in order, but there was at least some possibility that her mental acuity was damaged badly enough to prevent reasonable judgment. However, bringing Ian into the discussion to defend her like that is way too reminiscent of bringing in a dupe to shill for you.

Iah -- you say you've seen the case for the prosecution but not the case for the defense?

First, review the evidence: the prologue from Of Atlantis posted by Lanaia under her byline ("By Lanaia Lee") on her webpage. Then review the first page of Dark Prince by David Gemmell. You can find that at BN.COM using their "see inside" feature.

Having done that, look up the legal term res ipsa loquitur.

That is the whole "case for the prosecution."

Notice that the "case" does not mention Ms. Lee's infirmity.

Now read the "case for the defense": Cheryl Pillsbury and Lanaia Lee.

Make up your own mind.

Lanaia:

To address
"These are lies, I did nothing wrong, these nuts are ruining my name"

1. They are not lies. They are documented assertions of wrongdoing, backed up by hard evidence. You *did* put Gemmell's work out with your name as author. You. Did. That. There's pictures and all.

2. Whether or not you knew it at the time, you did do something wrong, and you seem bloody slow about making any sort of amends about it. Take down the plagiarised material, for heavens' sake.

3. If your name/nom de plume is being ruined, it's by reportage of your own actions. Name calling might get you sympathy from your friends, but it doesn't change what you have done, what you have admitted to and what you need to do to fix it.

Now, get this straight. This is not about your writing quality, or your disability, or your living circumstances. This is about a stupid series of mistakes you made and aren't unmaking.

It'd be a long bow to draw to say everyone on this thread is actually trying to help you, but the people saying "take the plagiariased stuff down RIGHT NOW before you get your nethers sued off" are professionals, working in the field, giving you very sound advice, which you are dragging your feet on. Noone wants to see you lose whatever money you have in a lawsuit, which Gemmell's estate will be obliged to launch to defend its copyright unless you act quickly.

So stop wasting time rallying the troops for sympathy, and deal very quickly with the legal consequences of the mistake you have made.

Technically, the entire prologue of "Of Atlantis" is a copy of the first chapter of Dark Prince. It comprises 6 pages. I just, out of laziness, posted the first page.

If this had happened to me (never would, I DO write my own stuff, such as it is)...

"What?? That no-good, nasty, evil ghostwriter I hired did WHAT??? I'm SO sorry, there's been a terrible mistake and I'm going to fix it right away! I really hope no one thinks I did that on purpose, because it was just a mistake. Although I've never read any of David Gemmel's works, I apologize to Mr. Gemmel's family and please be assured that it was a grevious error that I deeply regret."

See how much better that is, as opposed to "I've done nothing wrong and you're all a bunch of nuts and I'm disabled, don't blame me"?

Again, right way and wrong way. Right way keeps your dignity and some respect.

I am a dedicated lurker, and have only recently developed the courage to post, but this time I actually have a related question. I think everyone agrees that taking a whole chapter from another author is wrong. Even if you change the names. Even if you change a few of the words. But what about a sentence?

I write only for my own amusement, but was still horrified a few months ago, when I was re-reading a favorite book and discovered that I’d inadvertently borrowed a sentence for one of my stories. Seven little words, but they were clearly the work of another author. I could claim that it was coincidence, but it’s much more likely that the words had stuck in my memory. (I’ve re-read some of my favorites so many times that I can quote whole passages, and even though I’m not sure I could have quoted that one, I still fear I somehow subconsciously remembered that particular word string.)

By my own definition, plagiarism applies to the result, not the intent, so that even though I didn’t mean to do it, it’s still wrong. I've since removed that sentence, obviously.

But what if I’ve done it elsewhere in my work, and what if someday I finish something, and manage to convince an agent and a publisher that it’s worthy of being shared with the rest of the world? I may think that every page is my own creation, but what if there’s some little phrase that isn’t?

It's a hypothetical worry at this point, but I'm still thinking about it.

Tristan:

Unintentional plagiarism happens rather a lot, especially early in the writing habit/hobby/craft/career. You throw out a particulalrly good sentence, and are terribly pleased by it, and later realise that the reason you liked it so much is because Jane Austen got it right 200 years ago.

It's worse in academic writing - you read up on a subject, balance all views, finally compose an essay which reflects what you think. Alas, all the stuff you've read and taken notes on percolates through your mind until you aren't sure what's yours and what's not, and many's the time an undergrad has been warned their work is far too close to a noted article or book.

In Academic writing, the remedy is easier: take really careful notes with direct quotes, footnote anything you didn't write yourself. And read as broadly as you can, so there's less chance of just one choice set of words getting stuck inside your head. Actually, reading widely is part of the remedy for fiction as well - the more words there are in your head, the more to choose from.

For fiction, it's also about finding your own voice. When you are starting out, you imitate writers whose work you enjoy or find effective. So their stuff creeps in. But the more widely you read, and the more you write, the more authentic and less dependant on others your writing will be. You'll never be wholly original - no writer writes in a vacuum - but your editors and proofreaders should pick up anything obvious or dangerous.

#401, #407 Thanks guys! To echo a previous commenter, I love this place!

Faren Miller: It's perhaps best to think of Lulu.com as an online copy shop (like Kinko's et al) that happens to offer bookbinding as one of its services.

Anna @ #474: <Sigh> At this point even my sympathy is pretty strained. At the very least, Lanaia (we have other Marys) really shouldn't be let out without a "keeper", or at least not onto the Internet....

Vian, thank you for the reassurance. Although I may start gathering my band of merry sock-puppets, just in case.